


The Evil Dragon of Another World.

by JoySeeker101



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Evil, Evil Main Character, Evil Plans, F/M, Manga Vs Wuxia, QI, Reincarnation, Ruthless, Wuxia, cultivation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:27:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 39,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27573776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoySeeker101/pseuds/JoySeeker101
Summary: Shen Lan-Yun (Lan-Yun, “ 兰韵 ” means Orchid melody.)THE Evil Conqueror, the man that more than anybody went close at ascending to Godhood, the Villain that destroyed entires Secs in his quest for power...A cunning, silver-tongued Devil able to get under the skin of whoever he met.At the peak of the final battle, where the Greatest Heroes at the head of the biggest Army were about to stop Shen from achieving his wish for Godhood, the Gods themselves intervened and stopped him, hoping to erase his very existence before he could become a Deity himself and move his slaughter to the Heavens.Unfortunately, they failed, the Ritual having been almost complete and so removing Shen's soul enough from their control he could transmigrate in another Realm insted of being destroyed.And now Shen is ready to try again in a new body "Kindly" gifted to him by a mistake of one Minato Namikaze, that will never guess what Horror he permitted to enter his world.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 11





	1. The Evil Dragon yearns the Heavens.

**Author's Note:**

> Since the complain I heard the most about is that we Fanfictionists don’t write Naruto/any other character EXACTLY AS THEY ARE IN CANON (Stop whining and read and support the original series if you want THAT) and just “Create an OC with the same name.”, I will come out clean immediately about this story:  
> HERE WE HAVE A WUXIA MARTIAL ARTIST REINCARNATING INSIDE NARUTO’S BABY BODY.

**Jade Mountain – Spiritual Stream Sect – Ruins of a desecrated Temple -**

****

The armies of five of the six Sects of the _Yuntian Continent_ were all gathered around what once was the sacred mountain of THE most ancient and honorable Sect of them all, a mountain housing the holiest of temples, one where only ten Cultivators per generation were permitted to enter; ten chosen ones summoned between MILLIONS of adepts at Qi Cultivation that would then congregate and study so to advance their knowledge in Martial Arts and hope to be the one that would be chosen by the three Great Elders living there, deemed worthy of becoming their pupil so to learn about the Secrets of the Universe and hopefully ascend to become a Legend.

But today was not a day of celebration, it was a day of mourning, of rage and of hatred.

Exactly a day prior, somebody attacked the sacred Orchid Mountain Temple as he had promised, tearing his way through its gates and leaving behind one-hundred-thousand dead Cultivators haphazardly thrown around like trash, and beyond that mountain of corpses, the ten thousand Temple Guards and every single monk in there too could be found, slain and guttered like the others.

Shen Lan-Yun...A man whose talent as a Cultivator was said to be one even the Gods envied, the Prodigy to end ALL Prodigies, and a man that could attain such mind-blowing titles by breaking every Taboo in the world of Cultivation so to achieve his goals...Whatever those were as nobody could tell what he was after.

The Sects in the Yuntian Continent were formerly six: The _**Spiritual Stream**_ Sect, the _**Stars Conquering**_ Sect, the _**Bamboo Splitting**_ Sect, the _**Beastman**_ Sect, the _**Celestial Plains**_ Sect and the _**Diabolical Gorge**_ Sect...All of them had been laid to waste in the span of merely three years with the _**Diabolical Gorge**_ Sect being now a desolate wasteland devoid of life, no longer existing.

Very few remembered Shen Lan-Yun as the only child of a piss-poor wine-maker of the _**Bamboo Splitting**_ Sect, but instead every one of them remembered him as the old man that avenged his father’s death by destroying utterly and completely the _**Diabolical Gorge**_ and killing every man, woman and beast in there as soon as his Cultivation reached a high-enough level...And from whatever twisted knowledge he had stolen from the ruins of that land of corruption and depravity, the man’s campaign for power had started with new fervor, soon making fire and blood rain over the entire continent for years to come.

“So...Here we are...He really did it. He committed the greatest of sins.” Mu Xu-Yao, THE Champion of Champions, said shouldering the jade lance that helped him become a living-legend and the personal guard of the Emperor himself at just thirty years of age.

“This happens when a child’s cry for help is ignored in favour of politics and hidden agendas; one can never know if a snowflake will just disappear among millions of others or finally give birth to an avalanche. Part of this is to be blamed on us, this sea of hatred started when we refused to recognize the first wave for what it was.” a venerable old man, the LAST member of the _**Celestial Plains**_ Sect still alive, answered while passing a hand on his long beard, thick whirlwinds of pure golden Qi energy moving restless around him and ready to attack.

“Yes, he begged for years to finally have justice for his father’s death, but compared to the life of a Sect Elder, the life of a Wine Maker unable to even Cultivate Qi was deemed worthless.” a woman with bear-like features answered while palming her giant war ax.

“That life was worthless for many of us, and especially so for the Elder that ordered the man dead for such a small matter as bad wine being given to try ‘ _buying’_ some mercy for him and his son...But for a child, the life of a parent is more valuable than the life of the Gods themselves, and Shen Lan-Yun was more than happy to remember us this, my fellow Champions.” another woman said while preparing her own weapon: a pair of fans composed by dozens of sharp knives bound together.

“Then why he kept waging war against all of us? He got his revenge when he exterminated the Elder’s family and then drowned him in their accumulated blood...Why continuing to kill and destroy after that?” Mu Xu-Yao asked in distress, horrified just like the others were by the memories of what Shen had done through the years.

“He was responsible for the destruction of an entire Sect, you really believe he would have been left alone after that?” the Bear Woman asked mockingly.

“I also suspect that he discovered something while killing Elder Xiao, the _**Diabolical Gorge**_ Sect had always dwelt in the most obscure forms of Cultivation and rituals, always toeing the thin line between Taboo and Acceptable. Knowledge that permitted to that tiny Sect to enlarge and become one of the biggest in a very short time by devouring everything around them...I can only guess what he must have discovered in those hellish halls, something that either had him lose his mind to madness, or that corrupted him to the point of turning into the demon we all know.” the venerable old man replied.

“ _Neither of the two, Old man..._ ” A whisper answered in cold hatred, making those champions and the assembled army with them tremble in shock and fear.

“Shen Lan-Yun!” the old man replied with a chastising tone, and blasting away the man’s own evil presence with great difficulty in a flare of his golden Qi.

“Lord Hùndùn!” (Lord Chaos) the bear woman growled in fury, using one of the MANY nicknames Shen had been bestowed with through the decades of his endless bloody campaign.

“ _I am sorry, but I cannot welcome you properly in person, I am waiting for the last Elder here to bleed to death...Then it will be the turn of our ‘_ Esteemed’ _Emperor.”_ Shen answered mockingly, and the voice projection shamelessly reached every man or woman or beastman present so that nobody could miss his answer.

“NOOOO!” Mu Xu-Yao yelled in horror.

“ _Poor Mu-Mu...Surprised to hear about your dear Emperor being here with me? Do you already miss his touch? His sweet talk after he has done taking his jollies with your ‘_ Lovely’ _posterior?...Really, there is knowledge even_ **I** _, Shen Lan-Yun, can happily live without...Your being this old fossil’s love toy being the top of that list.”_ the man answered, and his spiritual projection didn’t miss the chance to also broadcast his disgust.

“Mu Xu-Yao...” the woman with the battle-fans muttered shocked, and all of them taking the young man’s ashamed silence as the only answer they needed.

“ _What’s wrong, Po? Saddened that the man you fawned on prefers to ‘_ Take’ _more_ _than to ‘_ Give’ _? Ah! You so-called ‘_ Champions’ _are all the same...All imagine and no substance!”_

“Why are you doing this, Shen? You got your revenge! What use did it have for killing everybody else?” the venerable old man asked.

“ _Yes, I did get my Revenge_ _after seventy long years of training and planning_ _. I did take pleasure in mutilating and torturing the whores and bastards born from that Old Shit’s loins. I_ _hunted-down and_ _exterminated every descendant he ever had, both known and unknown and even_ _the ones he had_ _from the various ‘_ mistresses’ _and whores he had hidden all around the Continent; I did it and I was ready to walk to King Enma’s Palace with my head held high and ready for my punishment_ _once finished erasing his bloodline_ _...But then...I discovered a little_ _secret of yours, and I changed my plans_ _._ ” Shen answered, and in that instant a wretched cry of anguish resounded from the top of the mountain beyond the clouds, chilling the blood in everybody’s veins.

“ _That was the last Elder...Now...The last piece..._ ”

“What was this secret you discovered, eh!? I want to hear how you will justify all those deaths!” the bear woman yelled.

“ _Justify? I don’t have to justify a thing! Hahahaha! I am merely giving the finishing touches to a_ _forgotten incomplete_ _ritual the_ _ **Diabolical Gorge**_ _Sect has been tasked to recover and complete by the orders of the Emperor himself_ _oh so many years ago! A task they could_ _manage_ _on_ _ly_ _thanks to_ _the help of few others..._ _I_ _sn’t that right, Old man Zao?...I have read the_ _ **Golden Scroll**_ _, your prized creation!_ ” Shen said chuckling darkly.

“NO!” the venerable old man bellowed with a pale face of absolute horror.

“Golden Scroll?” the Bear Woman asked, confused.

“ _Only you among all of them, Thunderous Bear, are the only Virtuous warrior; if you look back, only the_ _ **Beastman**_ _Sect came out unscathed from my merry slaughtering, not a single Beastman had died by my hands voluntarily_ _ever since I started_ _. Only you between the so-called ‘_ Six Divine Champions’ _have never spread your legs, lied, cheated, conspired or bought-off_ _your way_ _to_ _the all-important_ _status_ _of_ _Supreme Master. I am rotten inside, yes, and I enjoy following my instincts, yes...But there are way worse beasts out there, worse even than me! At least I admit to be the lowest of the low,_ _never hiding behind false smiles and chivalrous attitude._ _”_

“So?” the woman asked back while stealthily stealing a glance to her companions, and noting how some of them looked outraged, and for some reason, she believed that outrage was about their secrets being publicly outed instead of their being accused of false sins.

“ _ **The Golden Scroll**_ _contains a very interesting ritual, one that requires the sacrifice of ten thousand Cultivators for each stage of Qi condensation, followed by the sacrifice of a Pure soul AND a Sinful soul...Every death must be achieved in a very specific order and method, a single drop of blood then must be collected_ _from_ _each victim and the_ _resulting mixture of blood then needs to be_ _filtered and prepared into an Elixir, and finally, the two souls must be collected by adding the two victims’ blood to the Elixir_ _before usage_ _...But_ _the Ritual_ _lacked the very final step, the most important_ _one_ _! And guess who managed to finish the ritual three entire Sects and the greatest Master in Elixir compounding in our Continent History could not fathom? ME!_ **I** _, Shen Lan-Yun, deciphered the secrets of the cosmos and All Things! SO, since I managed to complete it, it stands to reason that I will be the one to ascend to Godhood instead of this old incestuous PIG of our Emperor. Curiously, his deranged love for his niece and daughter makes him Sinful enough to be part of the ritual.”_

“YOU CAN’T DO THIS!” the venerable old man spluttered, raving madly in rage.

“Is it...Is it true?” Mu asked in disbelief.

“By his expression, I fear that it is indeed true, he really helped in creating a deranged Ritual to turn a Mortal into a God.” the Bearwoman answered, disgusted.

“ _Jealous, Zao? Jealous that I will reach the goal you and your dear friend the Emperor longed for? You should be, since I found every ‘_ ingredient’ _already there waiting for me, the Elixir was just waiting for the last two souls, that is what this little Festival was for, isn’t it?_ _To find the Darkest and the Purest souls?_ _I am so sorry then! I didn’t_ _know_ _that all those dead Cultivators I found in the_ _temple’s_ _basement_ _had been used to create the Elixir_ _!_ _Had I known, I wouldn’t have_ _left them out for you others to find,_ _but in all honesty,_ _their stench was getting on my nerves.”_

“T-T-Those corpses...Are not his doing?” the woman with the fans asked in disbelief.

“So it seems.” the Bearwoman answered.

“ _No-no! I killed the guards and monks,_ _that was all my doing;_ _they were even too eager to protect the birthing place of their new God! Good job in turning them into such zealous worshipers,_ _by the way,_ _even I would have not been able to do better! All the others instead were just mere decoration, just to_ _welcome_ _you others with the results of Zao’s greed while I finish_ _ed_ _this small ritual._ ”

“I FORBID YOU! I DESERVE IT! THAT IS MY GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT! MY CREATION!” the venerable old man screamed, only to stop when the Bearwoman hand grabbed his shoulder.

“WHY ARE YOU STOPPING ME?!”

“Just help us stop Shen, we might need your strength, but if you try to finish that ritual yourself, I will kill you.” she hissed in answer.

“ _Hahahahaha! Too late! I am already performing the last step!”_

“WHAT?!” everybody present yelled in shock.

“ _HAHAHAHA! I love dealing with ‘_ Heroes’ _like you, you are so eager to hear your enemy talk about his evil plans that you forget to take action! I just talked with you while finishing the Ritual! AND YOU ALL JUST PLAYED ALONG! HAHAHAHA! Such a silly delaying tactic actually worked!_ ” Shen answered with his mad laugh echoing all the way down the mountain.

“STOP HIM!” Mu yelled with wide eyes, he and everybody present running forward as fast as they could.

“ _TOO LATE!_ _GODHOOD_ _IS MINE!_ ” Shen answered, and together with his scream a giant bolt of lightning rained from the sky, disintegrating the mountain in its entirety, cutting the entire continent literally in two and pulverizing the Champions and the army with them in a flash blinding light.

Nothing and nobody survived, the entire land had been stripped clean, leaving behind just a giant crater spawning for a third of the entire giant continent, soon to be filled by the sea water around it finally separating the giant landmass in two.

**Untold amount of time later -**

“...”

“...”

“ _...Interrupted a step away from victory...Typical. I should have guessed that the Gods would have been against somebody joining them, nobody likes competition after all!”_ Shen thought with a tired sigh as he watched the tiny, smooth hands of his new body.

The ritual had been an absolute success, had he knew how to put it in numbers, he would have seen the thing reach the 99.9% mark before the _**ENTIRE PANTHEON**_ of Gods ruling over the Mortal realm finally decided to join forces and utterly erase him and everything around him to stop his ascension.

A pity though, for them, that instead of obliterating his soul like they did with everybody else in the blast radius, Shen’s spirit simply transmigrated elsewhere out of their reach, by the time they noticed his Ascension his soul was already too much detached from the Mortal Realm to be an easy target, so instead of dying, Shen simply reincarnated elsewhere, a world in which he instinctively _knew_ they could not see/find him.

“A journey of a million steps always starts with the first one, it seems like I will have to start mine from the beginning...Although with a clear view of my path already in front of me.” the man in the body of a five year old kid muttered with a chilling smile, feeling his old Qi steadily awakening and waiting obediently for his orders.

When he first opened his new eyes, Shen saw a world of giants welcome him, until he learned that it was him to be tiny and defenseless...A baby, a one-year-old infant still held in the protective embrace of his mother while his body’s father fussed over a girl barely few minutes old.

The normal brain of a kid would have not remembered it, but Shen had the mind and wisdom of a Cultivator that managed to reach the Legendary ‘ _Auburn Dawn’_ Stage of Qi Cultivation, meaning that he had purified and elevated his body and soul’s inner energy to its limits, ready to push through the last barrier between ‘ _Mortal’_ and ‘ _God’_...He was over two-hundred years old, and just like any other Cultivator ‘ _Age’_ and ‘ _Time’_ were a mere after-thought, thus, remembering small details even if reincarnated as a baby was nothing to him.

A botched ritual killed that man’s son and permitted to Shen to take over the empty husk, and the Irony of this was immense to Shen: a butchered Ritual killed him in his previous life, and a similar incident permitted him to be reborn, Fate truly was a mischievous kid sometimes.

“He wanted to summon a spirit to bind a giant beast inside his two children, separating the Yin half and the Yang half so that both my body and its ‘ _sister’_ could manage to control the ‘ _Powerful’_ creature... _Tch_! A binding ritual made with a lesser spirit that can barely manipulate souls, no, even worse than that! He called upon a ‘ _Manifestation’_ of such lowly being! They can’t even summon the real deal! AH! ‘ _Death God’_ , had they summoned a real Death God, not a single soul in this entire Village would have been spared! Everything would have been erased just by virtue of one descending here and breathing! But...For a rushed job made on the fly, the fact alone that it worked on the girl and didn’t backfire is proof that the buffoon does have _SOME_ talent!” Shen said while looking at the reflection of the mirror in the orphanage hall, sneering at the bright blond and unruly hair instead of his old silky ebony strands, even his eyes were different: sapphire blue of _saccharine_ _naivete_ instead of the proud and sharp brown eyes he was used to, but at least he no longer had that ugly beak-like nose of his old body! That was a small mercy.

That binding did work, but apparently it sealed the entire nine-tailed fox inside the baby girl at the cost of forcefully tearing away the ability to use ‘ _Chakra’_ from the boy, shriveling and erasing his chakra coils as if he never had them to begin with and leaving the boy with just enough Chakra in its _core_ to live, as apparently losing all of it would have killed him from the shock; this in turn was deemed a payment good enough to leave the two parents alive instead of killing both, after all, the boy DID die, it was only that Shen took his place barely a second later so nobody noticed.

What to do then with a boy forever cursed to never mold chakra? His father was the Village Leader and both him and his wife had a list of enemies so long it was simply ridiculous that they were de facto still alive...So the boy had to be pried from the hands of both wailing parents to be put up for adoption into a ‘ _Civilian’_ orphanage until things calmed down thanks to the so called ‘ _Third Hokage’_ so that the boy could pass as a mere civilian orphan while the current Hokage’s son was declared dead, a pitiful plan to spare a defenseless boy the pain of being used as a leverage by revenge-thirsty enemies.

They thought that since the boy was one-year old he would not even remember them, and once waited a couple years just to be sure, make it possible to adopt him so to give him a chance at happiness.

It was amazing though that Shen did still remember all that but didn’t care; he even found the lack of Chakra a blessing! He could tell that the energy those people were so dependent on was like a leech, bridging both physical and spiritual power but _DEMANDING_ to be the only one to be used and even leeching from both to sustain itself.

It was almost amusing ‘ _squashing’_ the small core of chakra he had inside with the overwhelming power of his Qi, making that leech recede into a corner and lower its head in deference.

The only downside was that only his Qi and soul were still at their peak like in his old life, his new brain and body instead could not even hope to match up, a thing he discovered painfully when he tried summoning even just a fraction of his old Powers...He almost died on the spot and had to be brought to the hospital for severe bleeding and the almost rupturing of all his organs to shreds, he even had to _**carefully**_ guide his Qi to help the medicines the medics gave him to repair the damages in order to survive! And even then, it took him months to fully heal, and the shame of reducing himself in that state almost had him blow-up in rage.

Since then, once reached his fifth birthday, he started meditating and training lightly like a common novice just admitted into a temple. He knew that he was still too young for proper exercises, but he already knew what he wanted to achieve, so laying the foundations for his future development was nothing too straining, and doing that under the prying eyes of his body’s ‘ _parents’_ was even more amusing, it looked like they never forgot the baby they were forced to leave behind as they watched over him whenever they could just to see him ‘ _imitate’_ the training Normal Ninjas went through.

‘ _Oh so very tragic_!’ Shen would think in amusement whenever he caught them in their ‘ _hiding spots’_.

“Naruto? There is somebody that wants to speak with you!” the owner of the orphanage said with a gentle smile and interrupting his musing.

Apparently they made sure that the dead son of the Hokage was registered as ‘ _Naoto Namikaze’_ while ‘ _Naruto’_ was the Civilian orphan instead, it was a quirk of being the Hokage: switching birth certificates and identities with a dead no-name brat came easy when the one doing it was the Supreme Leader of the place, at least like that they left the boy with his original name.

It was with a great surprise that Shen saw who was there to adopt him, though. The man had the same smile, the same kind eyes, the exact same chuckle and long mustache with the first signs of white hair of the only man Shen had actually cared about in his entire life…

Fate could really either pull pranks or give people the greatest gifts, the old man was even a wine maker like his beloved dead father was! The difference was only in the name: Yujiro Sasaki instead of Dugu Lan-Yun, but everything else, was the exact copy of the father he had in his old life.

“Sasaki-san would love to be your new daddy, what do you think?” the owner asked happily, having finally found somebody for one of her precious wards.

“Let’s go home, my boy.” Yujiro, that frail-looking giant of a man, said softly and offering his hand with a gentle smile.

“ _Let’s go home, Little Shen_.” at the same time, the man’s doppelganger repeated those exact words in Shen’s memories of a more peaceful time long past, and with both men overlapping each other.

“Yes, father.” the kid answered in a daze while grabbing that big, and warm, hand.

Not a mere second after he did and said that, the old man pulled on his hand to lift the boy in his arms and make him ride on his shoulders while laughing merrily, as if _he_ was the kid getting the present he had always wished for.

“I am sorry it took this long, Yujiro, but since you are...Well...Since your wife passed away...It took longer for the adoption papers to get through the system, Hokage-sama had to vouch for you himself about your being able to take care for him even if alone...Please do take care of him.” the owner asked with a begging tone.

“Minato-sama?!”

“Exactly him.”

“ _Ooh! So this body’s father vouched for this adoption? Interesting! I can only guess how deep they looked into his past to be sure he was good enough._ _What a pity! Because_ _this decision is only mine to make instead!_ ” Shen thought while barely holding back a smirk.

“Kimiko, when the Gods took both my wife and daughter away from me the night Kyuubi attacked years ago, I had left myself drift away in despair...But then...My eyes met the ones of this little fella...And I felt a pull deep down my chest! I knew that we both could have healed each other’s wounds! He has lost his family the same way I lost mine, I knew it was Fate that made me pass by here instead of my usual road, so once cleaned-up and put my life back together, I knew what I had to do.” the man answered.

“Yeah, you did it alright! Two years of papers, meetings with lawyers and god-only-knows how much bureaucratic hell, but we did it, you old fool! So know that IF something fishy happen, I will make you pay.” the old woman answered with a chilling smile.

“Is it the Orphanage Owner talking, or the retired ANBU?” Yujiro asked in dread.

“Both, only you know what I used to do back in the days. You know what I can do to a human spine.” she answered smiling evilly.

“So!? Ice-cream?” Yujiro asked to the boy on his shoulders with a high-pitched tone.

“I just want to go home, father.” Shen answered.

“...Say that again...Please...” the man begged.

“Father?” the reborn Cultivator answered.

“I-I missed being called like that...Where do I have to sign? Does he have anything he wishes to take back...Back h-home?” the sake maker asked with a trembling voice.

“This way, you fool, let’s give this little miracle the finishing touches so you both can go home and start being father and son for real.”

“Yes.” Yujiro answered with a happy smile and few tears already spilling out of his control.

But he was not the only one crying, the red-haired woman hiding in the shadows and spying inside was silently crying her eyes out, clutching her chest to the point of her nails digging in her flesh drawing blood and doing everything in her power to not rush inside and grab the boy herself and take him away with her where he belonged, and she knew that as soon as she informed her husband, the man too will suffer just as much, but they both also knew that they had no right to pull the boy away from a chance at happiness just to appease their selfishness; unless that man was not a good father, in that case no force in Hell would stop the blond boy’s real mother from saving him.

**Years later – Konoha - Sasaki’s Wine House – Naruto ( _Shen’s new Body)_ : age 11 - **

Years passed in a flash for Shen.

He had welcomed the nostalgic smell of fermenting wine with a fond smile, reminiscing of the quiet days when he was learning from his father the inner workings of the art of Wine Making to one day take his old man’s place and own the shop; he was expected to do the same in his new life as well, but only in the far future, as for now he was just supposed to go to school like any boy his age, and with a laugh in his heart about the thing, Shen did, even just to understand in what kind of world he woke-up into, and it also left him with enough free time to train and meditate while he was supposedly outside playing.

“Another score card of absolute perfection...Eh! He is almost wasted making wine...” Yujiro said impressed by the score card a teacher from the local _Civilian_ school brought him.

“Your son is a scholar, I would never have guessed.” the old customer with him answered, smirking.

“He takes it from his dad, of course!” the wine maker said puffing-out his chest.

“Are you sure? I remember you sucking at math, if I am not mistaken.” the other countered.

“LIBEL! LIES!” Yujiro answered blushing madly.

“Hahahaha! In all seriousness, your brat is good and well mannered, looking at him one might think he is an old man in a child body, way too well behaved!”

“He is an orphan, kids like him have to grow-up fast.” the man answered sighing.

“Now he has you though, so let him be a kid, we all have only one moment of youth, do not let him waste it.”

“Have no fear! Kids should act like kids! I still don’t get this fixation for ninjas and training their kids to kill and steal ever since they get out of the crib! You know that the Hokage’s daughter already knows how to throw a kunai and hit a human head from thirty meters away? She is even younger than my Naruto, for fuck sake!”

“Unfortunately we need shinobi to protect the Village, is a dirty, horrible price to pay to sleep well at night...And even then...Better those Ninja Clan brats than our kids, eh?” the old man answered, leaning closer to whisper in a conspiring tone.

“Oh, yes! Definitely!” Yujiro answered, laughing.

“Where is your boy by the way? Out chasing girls?”

“COME ON! HE IS ONLY ELEVEN! Not everybody was a little deviant like you were!” Yujiro answered, appalled.

“I was not a deviant!”

“Yes, you were!”

“LIES!”

**Meanwhile – in one of the training grounds -**

The air was clean, and the place finally quiet after the last Jounin and her Team had left, leaving the place empty for Shen to use for some calm meditation, and once found a good-enough tree with a shadow of his liking, he sat down and closed his eyes to connect to the inner universe that was his Qi.

“Ahh! There it is...Still magnificent.” he muttered as he ‘ _saw’_ the enormous spiral of bronze-red energy that was the _galaxy_ of his Qi.

Meanwhile, not too far away, a young man with ‘ _peculiar’_ eyebrows was just entering the same training ground for some mindless training, too deep in thought to notice that behind one of the trees there was somebody else already, for the deep-in-thought Newly-promoted Jounin, just the fact the blond kid was not in plain sight meant he was not there.

Getting into the initial stance of the _**Goken**_ fighting style, Maito Gai started going through the warming exercises, but the body was moving in autopilot as his mind was somewhere else.

“No usable chakra. So no illusions or Ninjutsu, is it feasible?” the man muttered while his punches and kicks cut through the air with sharp swishing sounds.

“Can a shinobi rely only on his strength to exceed?”

A kick blurred forward and a near tree trembled slightly from the resulting air pressure making few leaves fall down, one of which landing gently on top of Shen’s head.

“Would the boy’s fists be enough?”

“...All this dependency on chakra is honestly baffling, I was of the idea it was supposed to be only an asset, not a crutch.” a whisper answered once carried by the wind, too low to be clear who was talking.

“Uh? who’s there?” Gai asked.

“I am trying to meditate, go somewhere else if you have to play philosopher.” the same voice answered sharply, and this time, Gai could swear the tone almost sounded child-like, and yet, he could still not pin-point who was its owner.

“Meditate? Why?”

“Qi is Everything, and Everything is Qi. Chakra is just there to help! If ‘ _that boy’_ can’t use chakra then so be it! There was a time Might was determined by one’s strength and achievements, not from how big a fireball they could spit! Teach him to cleave the Heavens in twain with a punch or upturn mountains with a kick, then you’ll be worthy of telling me if Chakra really is that important!” this time the voice was clear, booming and rasping, and thundering in Gai’s ears making him wince.

“There is no need to be so harsh, Stranger...” Gai muttered, still with ringing ears.

“...”

“...Hello?”

“...”

“You still there?” the man asked nearing the tree he knew the voice came from and finding nobody there, only a patch of grass way greener and healthier than the rest, as if something had enriched the soil with pure Life.

“He must have left.” Gai said sighing, he didn’t thought that this mysterious stranger could have been so annoyed to leave like that, unless he was already in a foul mood.

“Cleave the Heavens and upturn mountains...Without Chakra...YOSH! If it can be done, I’ll do it! And my student will manage too!” Gai finally said once looked at his closed fist for several second and then yelling his determination to the sky.

Just outside the training ground, a very angry eleven year old blond boy could be seen walk back towards the Village with an annoyed expression.

“Training Ground 8 is out too” _Grr! “_ …Nobody here seems to understand that training is not just making a mess! They just focus on mindless noise and flashy techniques!” _Cough!_ “Back in the days their _shifu_ ( _Teacher_ ) would have whipped their backsides until they bled for such a thing!... _Ack!”_

 _Cough!_ “Using Qi to force my voice to sound deeper and older was a bad idea! Now I’ll have to waste time healing myself again! I curse this childish body! I curse it!” Shen growled with a low voice, having almost turned himself mute because tired of Gai’s ‘ _whining’_.

If only Gai knew that those few words ‘ _of wisdom’_ that helped him decide to follow his gut feeling and indeed take young Rock Lee as his disciple came from a short kid, reincarnation of an old Legendary warrior or not, it would put a little damper on the man’s relief, but luckily for all parties involved, he would never know.

**First chapter over, just an introduction and background info on Shen.**


	2. Ninjas.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shen Starts his first steps towards re-gaining access to his old Powers, but keeping his head low was never an option after years doing that in his previous life before he achieved his Power. The Ninja of Konoha will either learn he is not beneath them or die trying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story may sound a bit edgy, I will admit.  
> And yet, compared to the "Bad Ones", my story is FAR from being something "edgy"
> 
> But to be fair, I am trying to stick close to Manwha/Manhua style of story-telling when it comes to Shen, and when it comes to Wuxia/Xianxia, the terms and style can be even ‘worse’ than this, so be grateful I am containing myself.
> 
> But for somebody used to Mangas, this style was too different to not be attracted to that, I hope you will give this story a chance, especially since I am taking time to build-up on what he is doing since Wuxia are from a different culture…
> 
> Next chapter will start from the ‘Canon’ timeline with Team 7 and the others, with Shen finally able to start using his powers for real and improve to return to his former glory.
> 
> Evil glory.

**Konoha – Shen’s new body’s age: 13 - Hokage Tower – Hokage Office -**

“...So the total amount of victims rose to six?” the blond man behind the desk asked with a frown while waving the thick stack of papers in his hand as if to summarize what was written in there.

“Yes, Minato-sama. Every victim was completely drained of blood, and every one of them had one organ surgically removed.” the heavily-scarred man answered.

“I see, do they have anything in common, Ibiki?” the Hokage asked.

“Not much...All were healthy, all of them were between their thirties and forties, no use of alcohol above normal, no drugs except for the strange one we found has been used on each one of them to knock them down. They didn’t even have history of diseases in the family...They were ‘ _clean’_...Physically and mentally speaking at least.” Ibiki answered.

“Physically and mentally, what do you mean?” Minato asked with narrowed eyes.

“Eh! Even socially there are no similarities! The woman was apparently the ring Leader of a prostitution ring, the old man was a retired shinobi, albeit crippled to the point of being no stronger than a Civilian...And let me tell you, even I once or twice wanted to kill the asshole, he would never shut-up about how powerful he was back in the days, always bitching about that lucky shot that crippled him.”

“The one that used to say he could wipe the floor with Sarutobi-sensei back when they were teens whenever he drank too much?”

“Exactly him, very unpleasant fellow, I am saddened to say that maybe not many will cry his passing, he was way too bitter to let people in his life.”

“I see. The others?”

“The others were...Well, plain nobodies...One that almost got a legendary reputation for eating and running away without paying ( _Chouza Akimichi swore that even if he and every other member of his Clan_ _openly_ _wished to, nobody of them killed the guy._ _We checked, all of them have iron-clad alibi._ _)_ , an old lady that had several accounts of assault on her back, a young woman ‘ _famous’_ for ditching men daily because to her they were not worthy of her beauty, and then the last one: a shut-in, the poor guy was apparently rejected by his bride right on the aisle, he had disappeared for six months, when we finally found him he was already dead for three days, by the looks of it, he did absolutely _**nothing**_ except eating and sleeping...He simply wasted away, if not for his missing body part, one would have thought he died from grief alone.” the head of the T&I Department answered.

“Missing Body Parts...Which ones?” Minato asked.

“Let’s see: Two hearts, an entire brain, one entire stomach section, one tongue, and the ditched groom’s hands, both of them. The bodies were all mummified, not a drop of blood to be found. We had to use a dental mold to recognize most of them.”

“You have an idea already?” the Hokage suggested.

“Besides the culprit being the same guy AND a psycho? We are dealing with somebody with damn good medical knowledge since everything was done squeaky clean and without a single mistake. I am checking if the victims knew each other, but for now I am coming-up empty handed.”

“Any theory?”

“It was not mere vengeance, that’s for sure, too complicated and ‘ _proper’_ for that; We are even considering somebody killing for ritualistic purposes, just not the Jashinists.”

“Rituals…”

“It’s a guess as any other. Especially considering the missing body parts, the ‘ _Deranged Cult’_ ritualistic theme is all there, the victims all bleed to death and had key organs removed...Is just that the blood too is missing.”

“You sure it was not the Jasshinists? Their cult is all about carnage.” Minato offered.

“Yeah, in the end I considered that too, but I believe this is the result of somebody playing surgeon, Jasshinists don’t give a damn about making it clean, on the contrary, for them the widest is the spray of blood, the better.”

“True...So we may very well have a Serial Killer that is going with a cult theme...Or somebody with a different plan in mind that is trying to make it look like it was just a madman doing this.”

“I will try to dig-out if the victims do have something in common...If our suspect is actually not following a theme at all.”

“Of course. Keep your eyes open, Ibiki.” Minato asked.

“I always do, Minato-sama.” the other replied with a smirk and a bow.

“That you do.”

**Meanwhile – isolated location – Forest of Death -**

_Pat! Pat! Pat!_

Tiny hands calmly patted the terrain where two giant urns had been buried just a minute before, soon returning the place to its former appearances to the point even a bloodhound would not be able to find anything wrong.

“The _brain_ of a vain child: filled only by its own delusions of beauty.

T he  _ tongue _ of a wrathful hag: perennially lashing-out in anger at the universe for her unfulfilled desires. 

T he  _ heart _ of a prideful old tiger: bitter  at the memories of its lost fangs.

T he  _ stomach _ of a gluttonous waste: endlessly filling and never to reach satisfaction. 

T he  _ heart _ of a Lustful nymph: beating only for seeking pleasure. 

T he  _ hands _ of a lifeless  sloth : a will not strong enough to work and live again after tasting the bitterness of life...” Shen muttered with a pleased smirk  as he left the Forest and re-entered the Village .

“The first six have been collected, I will leave the last one for later, there is no hurry since the eyes of somebody drowning in jealousy are merely the finishing touch.”

“ _All those body parts have been properly ground and turned to mush and mixed with their owners’ blood and the compatible herbs I collected and infused in Qi to give them the same aura of the proper plants I needed, the first part of the ritual is almost done. Now I just need one hundred silver needles exactly three inches in length...That will be the hard part..._” the reborn Cultivator thought grimly.

What he was preparing was a ritual to fix his body in a way for it to welcome the training he will soon start,  training he will need  if he wanted to return to his old power so to try Ascending to Godhood once again; luckily THIS TIME, thanks to his Reincarnation, he will be able to start the ‘ _ Hundred Shadow Steps’ _ Cultivation method at the proper age:  _ fourteen _ . 

In his previous life he started this painful path when he was sixty years old and barely managed to achieve success, now instead he could only salivate in pleasure at the thought of how powerful he will become this time that he is doing it properly!

“Just six months before I turn fourteen, good! Just enough time for the balm to be ready, and as an added bonus, I am using the ‘ _Grief’_ of my victims and the lingering sorrow inside this Forest to give the finishing touches to the new batch of wine Father is producing! _Huhuhuhu!_ I wonder what people will think if they knew I killed six people so to give an extra kick to the aroma of some wine! But the ‘ _Demon resentment fermentation enhancement’_ method produces such a fragrant wine! One I am sure nobody here ever tasted! Even if doing it for six months instead of one year, the added grief from those six should cover for the shorter time...It’s worth experimenting.” the young kid said, pleased with himself as he re-entered his father’s wine-shop to see old man Yujiro waiting for him.

“I think it’s time!” the old man said with a wide smile as soon as their eyes met.

“Time?” the boy replied.

“I will finally start your real training in wine-making! You are learning about fermenting and filtering, now is time for me to teach you how to recognize and collect herbs and fruits and prepare the rice!”

“And I guess it won’t take a visit to the market, Father.”

“Nope! Or better, in case of the rarest herbs and fruits, you can go there keeping in mind to avoid overpaying for spoiled stuff, but the real talent is going into the wild and collect them yourself! Like I did with your grandfather when I was your age, and he himself did with his father and so on. It’s family tradition!” Yujiro answered, puffing-out his chest in pride.

“Then I will come, if father wishes so.” Shen answered.

“...I have to talk to your teachers, having you talk this formally all the time is a bit too much to expect from a kid.” the man muttered, unsure.

**One hour later – Hokage Tower – Mission Center -**

“ _Number 20! It’s number 20’s turn!_ ” in the waiting room, a voice rang-out from the speakers near the ceiling.

“Our turn, Naruto! Let’s go!” Yujiro said, proudly waving the small ticket in his hand.

“ _I prefer the use of jade tablets for this, but I can recognize the ingenuity of this ‘_ electricity’ _thing_ , _very versatile._ _Lacking Qi Cultivation_ _and Heavenly Treasures_ _sure helped them develop in very curious ways._ ” the reborn Cultivator thought as he followed his father to one of the free desks at the opposite end of the room.

“Good evening, how can I help you?” the pretty lady at the other side of the desk asked with a gentle smile.

“I want to request a D-Rank Mission: We need a Gennin Team and their sensei to help us collect herbs outside Konoha. Mostly heavy carrying and protection detail...I normally go alone, but since it’s time for my boy here to learn the craft, I want my son to be perfectly safe while with me.” Yujiro answered while ruffling the mop of blond hair next to him.

“...When was the last time you cut your hair?”

“A month ago, I want a ponytail, father.” Shen answered with a perfect innocent shrug.

“ _My old glorious ponytail._ ” the Cultivator added with a mental longing sigh.

“Then I will select the best one, these little cheeks must be protected!” the young woman answered smirking, and pinching said cheeks unaware of the monstrosity hidden behind that ‘ _adorable’_ face.

“ _What a blasphemy! I am Shen Lan-Yun! I used to throw entire Sects into chaos and terror just by mentioning my name! I shall not be petted like a common puppy!_ ” the poor man thought, secretly so furious he felt like throwing-up blood.

“That would be great! Here is the money, when will we be able to go?” Yujiro asked while handing her the small pouch of money he had previously prepared.

“Let’s see...Not before a week, every Gennin Team available is already out for D-Ranks, but at the speed Gai is taking and resolving them, you should not wait too long. When they are ready they will come collect you directly in your Wine-House, Yujiro-san.” the woman replied once checked her notes.

“Perfect! Then I will use this time to go through the theory, so my boy will have an easier time recognizing the Herbs. Thank you very much, Kunoichi-san!...Come on, Naruto, thank the pretty lady.” the old man replied.

“Thank you, young Miss.” the blond answered, bowing.

“So well behaved...” the woman muttered in awe.

“You okay?”

“Oh! Nothing to worry about! Just reminiscing! Here is your receipt,” she replied.

“I will take my leave then, farewell.” Yujiro, still looking confused, answered before walking away with his son.

“...”

“...”

“...You okay, Kushina-chan?” the woman’s colleague asked, worried.

“Uh? Yeah, I am just feeling sad all of a sudden, that’s all.” she replied with a weak smile.

“Sad that next year little Mito will become a Gennin? It won’t stop her from being your daughter!”

“No, I’m...It’s okay, it was just an old memory resurfacing, nothing to do with my daughter.”

**At the same time -**

“Good evening, Hokage-sama.” Yujiro bowed as he passed by Minato, making the man falter a little in his steps to watch the duo of wine-maker and son walk away from the Tower.

“…! G-Good evening.” the blond man found himself with a hand stretching-out as if to stop both when he caught himself and literally forced that hand down with his other.

“ _All so very tragic! So cheesy and tragic!_ ” Shen, having caught that, rolled his eyes at the entire situation.

Never regret one’s actions! Right or Evil! If you do something, face the results with your head held high and your back straight! Never cry about choices nobody forced you to take!

Even if in the end Shen gained a second life thanks to them, his gratefulness ended there; he did not owe them a thing beside having the body he took over reach for the heavens and surpass the gods.

**Later that night – small flat above the wine-house – Shen’s room -**

Shirtless, standing just on his toes while squatting with both arms stretched-out to their limits in front of him and with each hand holding a full ten-liters jug just with the fingertips; this was the initial stage of his training, the test to see a kid’s attitude to learn the ‘ _Hundred Shadow Steps’_ Cultivation method, and not a single kid had ever lasted more than two hours in this position as each movement was punished by a merciless whip lashing; it was either succeeding or failing, in that Temple they did not accept ‘ _trying’_.

Shen had been keeping that position for six hours straight now, not even a twitch to be seen anywhere.

“ _I can cut the hours I need to sleep down to one hour through Meditation...But this body...This body!_ ” the man thought in reverential wonder.

A mere kid even without prior training had a natural durability and a stamina many Cultivators back in his world would have called impossible, and yet, here he was inhabiting it! A body blessed by the Gods themselves!

“Hands with a grip power exceeding adult men, Vitality and Stamina worthy of six men and Durability of an initiated monk just waiting to start Qi Cultivation for the first time...All already there from birth and just waiting to be improved upon! What a joke is this?! What made it that such a body came to exist?!” Shen muttered in disbelief once finally dropped his training to just sit on the floor.

“Can it be that both parents hold such abilities and this child body of mine is the fusion of their best traits? Even without their vaunted _chakra_ mixed in? Had I not took over then...This treasure would have gone to waste! Ufufufufu! I wonder what heights I can reach with such a superior material as a base compared to the frail one I was cursed with at birth in my previous life?” Shen asked with a malevolent smile, listening to the subtle cracking sound of his bones as he closed a fist tightly.

“Do not worry, little Naruto! This Lord will show the world what your perfect body and my Genius can do once mixed together! We both will bask in eternity once I am done, so watch over me as I show everybody how superior Qi Cultivation is! I will make your name one worthy of Legends!...Alongside mine, of course. Ufufufufu!” he then said, flaring his Qi and making his sweat dissolve into vapor in an instant.

**The next day – woods outside Konoha -**

Gennin were the lowest of the low, their own title was just a mere formality to separate them from the kids still in their Academy, and yet some of them still held themselves with the insufferable smugness of Masters, and usually those fools were the funniest to break for people like Shen.

 _Sigh!_ “Hyuga are strict even as kids.” Yujiro muttered in sadness, and a bit of distaste, as he watched the rigid way the boy named Neji acted all the time.

“Do not bother, father. He is not worthy of it.” Shen answered while tying the small bundle of herbs they had just collected.

“...What?” he finally asked once noticed the intense look Yujiro sent him.

“Nothing, son. It’s just...You are growing-up so fast, I can’t help but feel proud.” the man answered with moist eyes and a wide smile.

“Thank you, father.”

“Tch!” it was faint, almost impossible to hear, but the derision in the small noise coming from Neji’s throat was not missed by neither of the two.

“Neji...” nor by his Team Sensei, Maito Gai, as he nailed the young boy with a subtle glare.

“Is my closeness to my father so funny to you, boy?” Shen asked simply, holding both hands behind his back in a very dignified manner.

“As if I-”

“Do not dare lie to me, boy.” the blond cut him off coldly, almost making the Hyuga bit his tongue.

“I-”

“You are bitter, hateful, prideful and hold yourself with even too much condescension considering that you are the lowest of the low! You have been in a Team for what? Not even one full year? Your own Teacher admitted it, so don’t deny it. It makes me wonder if that shining plaque of metal on your forehead is stopping blood from flowing to your brain; you should learn from your Teammates, they at least know basic respect and earned my respect back in exchange.”

“How dare you?!”

“I dare because in this world, the strong rule over the weak: you act like the Strong, but are FAR from actually be one of them.” Shen replied scoffing, turning around to kneel and finish collect the herbs, now fully ignoring the fuming Hyuga boy.

“Naruto...”

“He mocked you at every chance he had, Father. I can take every insult, spit and curse people will level at me, but I won’t accept even one of those to be said to you.”

“Eeeh...You can’t make everybody your enemy, not even for me.” the old man replied sighing.

“You are worth making this entire world my enemy, father. If it was needed, I would despise even the gods for you.” Shen answered, and had someone who knew him in his previous life be present, they would have been shocked to death at discovering that such an Evil man actually DID care about somebody else beside himself.

It was also why at his original father’s death there was no longer something holding Shen back from committing endless, horrible atrocities with no regrets whatsoever.

“Never thought I would say this...But sometimes you love me a bit too much...LOOK OUT!” Yujiro answered, shocked to see Neji haul his son to his feet by force.

“You look at me in the eyes when you talk to me, COMMONER!” Neji spat angrily while grabbing the blond by the scruff of his neck.

_Crack!_

“Gah!” the young ninja roared in pain as his knee gave-in an instant before the blond could fully raise to his feet.

“Wrong, it’s you that must kiss the mud while talking with me, worm.” Shen, now fully back in his ‘ _Hell Lord’_ persona, muttered so that only Neji could hear, having punched the sides of the ninja’s knee while being lifted by him, a punch made with the phalanx of his middle finger raised to perform his old ‘ _Spearhead Punch’,_ a hit charged in a tiny quantity of Qi to give it the same sharp hedge and power of its namesake, although this time only showing a fraction of its full power.

The fact that his hands’ bones did not try shattering like the first time he tried using it told Shen his new body was finally ready for his Ritual.

“You ninja believe Chakra is everything and that your shining _title_ makes you better than we others, you are wrong, and this young Lord will teach you the truth: STRENGTH matters, not silly powers or parlor tricks!”

“NEJI!” Gai yelled in worry, only to see the attack of his Gennin never land on the blond boy’s chest, because the blur he had barely caught moving towards his face was indeed Shen’s palm strike slamming on the Hyuga’s face with unbelievable force.

And to everybody’s shock, Neji _flew_.

“ _A palm strike charged in Qi_ and Buddhist Sutras, _the ‘_ Heaven Palm _’! An attack made to hurt the pride, never the body. Teaching young monks to not grow too full of themselves by having their Teachers smack them around with this until they learn humility without hurting them...I may have interrupted the Sutra half-way though, so some damage was still there...Ops!_ ” the reincarnated Cultivator thought in malevolence as he watched the Gennin tumble on the floor unconscious.

“Have you...Yujiro-san...Are you teaching your son Martial Arts?” Gai asked.

“No!...Why?...W-We are not in trouble, right?” the poor old man asked back.

“Not really, I noticed Neji’s attitude, but I guessed the thing would have just be resolved by some arguing, training or not, they are still children after all...But him attacking your boy was unexpected, and even more was watching said boy react even faster than me and send a Gennin flying before I could stop both...”

“So?” the wine maker asked, still looking nervous.

“Since Neji initiated the attack, we can pass it as self-defence, that it actually worked against a Gennin will be surprising, but a ninja is supposed to take _**every threat**_ seriously, even a Civilian attacking them.”

“We?”

“To be perfectly honest...” Gai admitted, leaning slightly forward.

“Neji’s attitude always worried me, I know there are ‘ _issues’_ in his Clan that made him what he is now, but that still does not justify the way he treats others; I fear this was bound to happen sooner or later.”

“Gai-sensei! Neji-kun is unconscious!” the Jounin’s student, a mini replica of him dressed in the same clothes, said in worry.

“ _Ehm_...I think his leg is also in a bad shape...Maybe broken.” the girl of the Team added unsure.

“Ah...” both adults muttered in surprise, looking the blond boy as he kept gaining herbs without a care in the world, as if nothing else was of concern to him now.

“For an instant he surpassed a Hyuga in close-range fight...Impressive.” Gai admitted.

“A bit.” Yujiro added dryly.

“Listen, I know a guy that owns a Civilian Dojo, they teach Judo and often hold small tournaments. Young Naruto is a natural, that palm thrust was pulled-off perfectly, if it was chance or not I can’t tell, but he may posses a gift for Martial Arts.”

“He...He is not really my son, he was adopted when he was very little. I guess his time in the orphanage was not easy, so he had learned to defend himself there, that and the whole ‘ _Strong rule over the Weak’_ thing he just talked about. He never talks about his time there though.” Yujiro admitted.

“Not many of them ever do. That would explain why he sees you as somebody so important, and it would also explain why it honed his senses that much, in order to avoid the more _unsavory_ elements in the Orphanage he must have sharpened his wit a lot.”

“ _Bullshit, it’s just that ever since I started walking in this new body, I NEVER stopped training in preparation of my Ritual! Is not like I had anything else to do beside sleeping and eating, so those twenty hours a day were used fully!_ ” Shen thought, hiding his sneer while pretending to not hear them.

“You sure I am not in trouble?” Yujiro asked with a small voice.

“Not this time, I will actually try to use this as a way to teach Neji some humility, but in exchange I want your boy to join the Dojo. Both to nurture his talent and to teach him that not everybody is an enemy. Do that and I will close an eye on this little incident.” Gai answered.

“Okay, but...Gai-san, could it be that you are actually happy my Naruto smacked Neji?” Yujiro asked with narrowed eyes.

“...No.” the answer took a bit too long to arrive, accompanied by such a fast and small twitch of his lips that even Shen almost failed to notice it.

“You done collecting?”

“All done, Master Gai.” Shen answered.

“Master?”

“You are a Taijutsu Master, yes?” the boy asked.

“Y-Yes, I am quite proficient, but to be honest I am still far from being a Master.” the man answered with a sheepish expression.

“Quite Proficient Gai sounds bad though.”

 _Cough!_ “T-Then use Master, if you must!” Gai answered, clearing his throat to hide his embarrassment.

“Of course, Master Gai!” the blond boy replied.

“If you are done tying them up, we can go back, Naruto.” Yujiro said while patting the boy’s head in affection.

“As you wish, father.”

“Let’s go, Team! Let’s return to Konoha and bring Neji-kun back to his Clan for his healing.”

“Wouldn’t the Hospital be better?” The girl, Tenten, asked.

“Unfortunately the Hyuga have a strict regulation when it comes to wounds and such. So I will be forced to tell them a Civilian knocked their ‘ _Prodigy’_ out cold in self-defence when they will ask why we are taking him back to their healers like this.” Gai answered sighing.

“...Are you perhaps holding a grudge for Neji’s remark about your eyebrows?” Tenten asked in a deadpan tone.

“...No.” again, the answer took several seconds before coming out.

**Later that night – _‘The Leaky Gourd’_ Pub - **

“And before I know it, _WHAM!_ Sent flying with a palm-thrust to the face! I counted at least six teeth flying right behind him like the tail of a comet!” Gai told to his drinking buddies sitting at the same table with him.

“Serves the little shit well!”

“Asuma!”

“What, Kurenai? You mean that little brat did not remind you of a younger Hiashi?” Asuma asked, rolling his eyes at the woman.

“Okay, maybe he has a bit of an inflated ego, but he still got a beating.” Kurenai answered huffing.

“Oh! Trust me, knowing the Hyuga, that boy will NEVER live it down! I heard the Heiress had a huge bouquet of flowers delivered to the Wine-House in thanks for knocking her cousin down a peg!” a new arrival added, joining the discussion.

“Kakashi! You are late! AGAIN!” Gai called-out.

“Why ruining a perfect life-motif? By the way, the Hyuga Elders also threw a stint, but Hiashi himself shut the thing down, it was a case of ‘ _self defence’_ they could not attack without making a mess and admit their precious Prodigy lost to a Civilian. So they just asked ( _and threatened a bit)_ the boy’s father to keep the thing to themselves in exchange of no reprisal.” Kakashi explained.

“They do know that people will still know, right? The _Gossip Mongering_ Division of ANBU will make sure everybody and their uncle will know of this in just a couple days.” Kurenai said, worried.

“The Uchiha are also helping in making sure the news spread, you know them, they don’t like the Hyuga at all...Or anybody else.” another woman added while emptying her glass.

“Anko is right.” Asuma answered.

“On a lighter note, I convinced Minato-sensei to let me be Mito-chan’s Jounin sensei.” Kakashi said with an eye smile.

The groans he heard in answer engorged his Ego to astounding proportions, and helped his drinks taste even better.

“Nepotism! Pure Nepotism!” Anko answered whining.

“You didn’t even want a Gennin Team before! What happened?!” Kurenai added.

“I was just waiting for little Mito to get in a Team herself...And the other two Teams they gave me were hopeless in terms of ability and Teamwork, really, the Academy standards are horribly low nowadays.” Kakashi answered.

“Suna is getting restless lately, just in case things take a turn for the worse, we need to inflate our numbers; Jounin are asked to not only do fine-tuning, but also give the finishing touches to the Teams. All things considered, we are just following the time-table of the other Villages, we no longer have the luxury of taking our sweet time before Graduation and Team building.” Anko replied, unconcerned.

“A ninja war is coming?” Asuma asked tensely.

“No, yes, not yet...Who knows? One can start everyday, you know it. It’s the main flaw of living in a world of Ninjas.” Gai replied, sighing.

“Let’s not think about this, we’ll worry about it IF we’ll have to.” Kakashi answered, waving their gloom away like a bad smell.

“Sake for everybody! I am offering!” another man said as he barged inside with a smile inhumanly large.

“If it isn’t our favourite blacksmith! What got you so happy, Rou-chan?” Anko asked, smirking.

“Got a BIIIIIG order ongoing! One hundred needles made with pure silver for an acupuncturist! I found his note pinned to my door this morning, all professionally written and stuck-up! He even left a small sum of fifty Ryous to confirm his order!” the old man answered, giddy.

“Acupuncture? Isn’t that a bunch of nonsense?”

“I let you know, Anko-san, that there is nothing better than some acupuncture after training to relax sore muscles.” Gai answered, sniffling haughtily.

“But why pure silver ones?” Kakashi asked.

“Most practitioners of chinese medicine believe silver holds special powers when used like this.”

“Cool.”

“Well! Special powers or not, it will cost the guy some pretty Ryous! So I will get some nice extra money in two weeks, and this puts a smile on my face.”

“One hundred needles in two weeks?”

“It is a difficult job, but I am motivated... _ **Richly**_ motivated.” the blacksmith answered with a silly, greedy smile, making the others groan at his idea of ‘ _Joke_ ’.

**At the same time – Hyuga Compound -**

“What a great _Prodigy_ you are...Barely in a Team and already picking fights with your Client, a client that then beat you to submission as soon as you decide to bully him.” Hiashi Hyuga, the Clan Head, said with a disappointed frown while looking at the bed-ridden Neji.

“Mmmngh!” the boy tried replying through his bandaged mouth.

“Spare me the excuses!” Hiashi barked, surprising the boy.

“Not only you broke one of the cardinal rules of a Shinobi: “ _The Client is sacred, respect and protect them with your life until the Mission is over.”_ , but you did so for a stupid reason like jealousy! And even worse, as soon as things escalated, you went defeated like this! WITH ONE ATTACK!”

“Nnngh!”

“Yes, Neji it was mere Jealousy. I interrogated your Teammates, talked with your Sensei and managed to have somebody get what happened from the boy’s father: as soon as the boy, _**A Civilian**_ , got tired of your nonstop veiled insults and finally talked you down and dismantled your baseless sense of superiority, you didn’t do the proper thing, that is: apologize and keep your mouth closed, you instead attacked him...To do what? What do you think would have happened then had you triumphed? Were you expecting a medal?” Hiashi asked with a mocking sneer.

“...”

“I thought so, you were not thinking! You acted like a common thug, and like one you were beaten. A Hyuga, Masters of close quarter combat, defeated in two moves by a Civilian and sent back home with shattered denture and a dislodged knee! And that was actually a miracle! They just had to set back your bones instead of taking away handfuls of shrapnel from your leg, signing the end of your career as a shinobi!”

“Now listen and listen well! This is what will happen now!” Hiashi ordered, making Neji try to move away scared from the _**FURIOUS**_ Clan Head.

“As soon as you are fully healed, you will train HARD since this proved that you are still immature as a fighter, let alone a Prodigy, then you will keep distance from that boy and his father at all times (And if I discover you instead tried something to avenge your ‘ _Honor’_ I will _**break**_ you) and you will drop this ‘ _I hate the World’_ bullshit you have roaming inside your head ever since Hizashi died! He was my Twin Brother too, not only your father, but you don’t see me go around beating random people!” Hiashi roared, making Neji squirm even harder under his glare.

“Things are going to change here, whatever you want it or not. I won’t bury a nephew just because he challenged the wrong people to appease his Ego.” he then said before marching out and slamming the door behind himself.

Unseen by him, Neji silently wept until the entire front of his chest was utterly damp in tears of sorrow...

**Six months later – Hidden alcove of the Forest of Death -**

While things were going well for the wine-house thanks to Shen’s experimental wine having an unexpected success, the poor blacksmith was still mopping about the mysterious thief that had broke into his forge to steal his silver needles two days before he could deliver them to his customer, unaware that both customer and thief were the same small blond boy that was now sitting in the lotus position in the middle of a mysterious circular array of seals.

“And by adding the eyes of somebody devoured by Envy, the Balm is now ready...That poor fool of a blacksmith, at least he didn’t remain empty-handed, I went out of my way to steal those money for him, he should be grateful I at least paid part of the sum in advance.” Shen muttered once finished the initial mind-cleansing meditation exercise and started covering his whole body with the foul-smelling concoction he took from the gourd he dig out from underground.

To be honest, he was a bit worried; the balm he created with the blood and organs of those seven people in addiction to the one hundred needles ( _eight for each Dantian,_ _and_ pathways, _of his Qi plus few extra ones on_ _other key parts of his body_ _),_ was supposed to use the grief, sorrow and other dark emotions contained into the balm to forcefully pull the innate Darkness of his soul to surface, as mastering both Light and Darkness of the Soul was the very first step of the ‘ _Hundred Shadow Steps’_ Cultivation method…

The ‘ _First Step’_ was using the _ **Balm of Sin**_ to start one’s path.

The ‘ _Last Step’_ (the 100th one) contained the forbidden 80 techniques only _**Masters**_ were able to learn, signifying their reaching the absolute peak of that Forbidden Cultivation Method.

The _steps_ in between were merely about Training, Meditation and mastering of the other 1000 techniques contained in its teachings; the problem was, normally the quantity of balm he prepared was enough for one-hundred people as it was supposed to cover the initiates’ forehead only, not the _whole body_ , so even if like this the effects would have been greater...The risk of death too was way higher, but fear for his life was something Shen had long lost before, and not even reincarnation had changed that.

“I wonder if this young new body can withstand the burden of my old soul...Thousands of years of sins so foul others mockingly said not even Demons would wish to touch my rotten soul...I wonder if this flesh will break-down or sustain the strain...” the Reincarnated Cultivator muttered as he gestured imperiously with his left hand towards the needles as he flared his Qi, making the hair-thin things come alive and fly by themselves to dig deep in his flesh with absolute precision, not even a millimeter off from their proper position.

“I even strained myself from something as simple as this pathetic exercise of Manipulation...I need to do this or my own Qi will one day be my downfall.” he muttered sighing.

“Father...Please forgive this unfilial son of yours, I still desire revenge against the gods that first took Mother away from us, and then took you away from me, never to answer to my prayers for the culprit to be punished.

I will Ascend to godhood, I will become a God, and once slaughtered those self-righteous pigs, I will blast the doors of their ‘ _Palace’_ of gold and jade open, and gift its halls to you two and our ancestors, so that you all will spend eternity in the proper environment you deserve...Even if I then won’t be able to stay with you because of my sins, I will at least make sure to return the happiness you gifted me in my youth.” Kowtowing a last time, the blond boy took the proper meditation position, and letting out a long breath, he guided the very last needle to pierce his heart pressure point, thus starting the procedure…

And with a thick explosion of blood rushing out of his mouth like a furious river, he fell unconscious while still holding his position, never faltering and yet with dead eyes cast downward.

Words of prayer then echoed in the lonely, dark woods, coming from the corpse of a young blond boy bleeding an endless supply of black tar-like sludge from every pore and releasing puffs of foul, dark miasma from his slightly parted mouth at regular intervals.

And far up in the Heavens, and deep down in Hell, spirits of every rank trembled in ancient dread as they could tell _something_ _unnatural_ was happening, but it was a something that for the first time in their ageless existence they could not divine or comprehend, let alone see clearly.

**End of the chapter.**

  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  



	3. Omukade the Centipede.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A faithful encounter between two Rotten Souls, what deranged flowers can bloom from such a mixture of distorted desires?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here enters in the scene the character I had the much fun to write: a Centipede. Inspired by the Japanese legend of the giant Centipede able to wrap itself around a mountain, the yokai 'Omukade'.

** **For everybody else with a more open mind and will to give authors enough trust to see what they are about to do, thank you for giving this story a chance.** **

** _ **Disclaimer** _ ** ** **: I don’t own a thing, please support the official release** ** ** **s of what I use** ** ** **.** **

MC is called Shen Lan-Yun (Lan-Yun, “ 兰韵 ” means _o_ _rchid melody_.)

** Chapter 3. **

**Forest of Death -**

The sun was just starting to go down, casting eerie shadows in the silent forest and causing the giant branches of the canopy above to project claw-like shadows everywhere...Everywhere except in a small patch where everything had simply rotten until nothing remained.

The immense trees in that patch indeed looked utterly dead, black trunks and decrepit and empty branches slowly falling apart at every wisp of wind, even the grass had become burnt-looking, hanging lifeless and turning to dust at the slightest touch.

And right in the middle of that dead land, a young blond boy was still sitting in a meditative position, having kept that position for hours and looking completely drenched in the same foul-smelling black sludge that had killed everything around him in a ten meters radius; his skin so filthy and caked in the desiccated muck that at first look one would believe the markings that sludge left behind  on his skin  will  _ never _ be removed.

It was when the last ray of light of the sun disappeared behind the horizon that a single, long crack appeared to cut the blond’s body vertically in two, and with a tenure worthy of an emperor, the same kid rose to his feet, leaving behind the same layer of dead skin like a snake going through molting.

“Aaah!” Shen exhaled with a delirious smile as he admired the sheer peerless beauty of his new body, akin to a porcelain doll, standing naked in the middle of the forest and yet exuding the grace of a god just descended from heavens.

“Hn! I missed this sensation!” the reborn Cultivator uttered in satisfaction as air now felt otherworldly crisp and colors vivid, meaning that his ritual had worked as intended.

But, shocking still was that h e was not an ‘ _Initiated’_ , but a first Level Cultivator! A ‘ _Bronze Realm’_ ! Using that much Balm and twice the quantity of needles to force his dantians open worked as he had planned! He had gambled with his life and was thus rightfully compensated!

“A Bronze Realm, I skipped the initial grade of _**Initiated**_ as I predicted! My Qi is refined to the limit of Mortal existence, of course the first Bottleneck would have not been an issue! It would have been preposterous to fall all the way back to the very beginning!...The other bottlenecks though...Those will be a problem to break through as I still need to train my body. But is not like I don’t know how I did it the first time! I have all the time in the world too! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” the young boy’s sharp laugh echoed in the entire forest, making sure that everything in there could perceive its cold edge.

“Now, to burn down everything, just to be sure.” Shen muttered, once recovered the spare change of clothes he had bought with him, and inwardly surprised of how much the ritual had actually pull-out from his younger body; he had to burn everything, to be sure nobody will know what happened there.

“Uh?” it was then that he felt a sharp pain in his chest, like a blade piercing his heart.

“NO! Don’t tell me...I was wrong?” Shen gasped in agony as he fell on his knees, it was a pain so agonizing even he was turning breathless.

“No! Not _Soul Burning!_ Everything but that! I was successful! I deserve-” he roared above his agony before he felt a thick metallic taste surge out of his throat in great hurry.

_ Splat! _

It was then that he moved on all four to vomit what looked like being a bucket-full of blood, splattering the terrain in front of him in crimson red...And right in the middle of the pool, a weapon stood in wait.

_ Cough! Cough! Cough!  _ “... _ Lotus _ ?” the Reborn Cultivator asked with a low whisper, the pain disappearing like an illusion in an instant.

The blade, even if lying in the middle of a pool of blood, looked pristine clean, with its thin and straight blade and unadorned white hand-guard shining in the first lights of the moon.

The _**Moon Lotus** _ sword , at first glance a  plain  and simplistic sword with a very thin  and long  blade finely engraved with a lotus motif, was supposed to be a wedding present for one of the emperors of Shen’s old world, but in the end it was instead used by said Emperor’s brother to kill him and take the throne...From there, legend s sa y that th e blade had been used as a decisive weapon for over one hundred coups through the ages, well before Shen was even born in his previous life, to the point that the sword’s meaning changed from the representation of a joyous day, to the embodiment of the blood spilled by power-hungry monsters;  i t was no surprise that same blade ended-up in Shen’s hands, having finally found a worthy ‘ _ Master’ _ , one so worthy the sword had apparently transmigrated with him in hope of not leaving his side.

“You could not leave me alone, isn’t it, my love?” Shen said with a tender smile as he grasped the blade’s handle, feeling his spirit soar in happiness at handling it once again.

“Even the storage distortion inside you is still in perfect conditions, you truly are my beloved! With this, I will have enough materials to restart my experiments.” only one gem was adorning the sword, a tiny unassuming blue gem the size of a pea, right under the blade, and yet, inside that gem there was a spatial distortion able to hold great quantities of objects, like a shinobi’s sealing scroll.

In there, the man found the ingredients and animal parts he had amassed through the ages, and while plants could be planted again so to maintain his supplies, the animal parts were harder to maintain since ‘ _ Spiritual Beasts’ _ did not exist in that new world, but he had long fixed that problem before, so doing it again in his new life was not an issue either.

“Let’s burn this down, it’s getting late and father will worry too much if I am absent for too long.”

Barely half an hour later, a giant cloud of smoke rose from the middle of the forest, and it will take at least one hour before someone finally gave the alarm, by then every trace would have been turned to ashes, leaving it to forever be a mystery as to why somebody caused that disaster, even if the number of theories will be immense in number.

**Uchiha Clan Compound -**

What actually made sure nobody will immediately notice the fire was the one-sided slaughter happening in the Uchiha Clan, one perpetrated at the hands of a single man towards the rest of his Clan.

“Too messy, totally unrefined.” Shen muttered as he tailed the rampaging youth, idly collecting the eyes, organs, heads and especially blood of the recently fallen without anybody noticing since that ‘ _It achi’ _guy was gentle enough to hog all the attention for himself.

“So many materials…Good! Very good! You even gave me a good excuse to be late home since this place is close to our wine house!” Shen muttered with a pleased tone as he kept collecting everything inside his sword, a sickening smile frozen on his face when faced will all that splendid loot.

“I wonder why he went mad, even though, admittedly there is a certain methodology to this, so the _madness_ angle may be actually hard to believe...” he then muttered thoughtful while stabbing another corpse he had just beheaded with a small transparent rock, watching pleased as the crystal turned slowly dark red to signal that every drop of blood of the corpse had been absorbed, it was way faster like this compared to how he collected blood for his ritual.

“I feel a bit bad about taking away the eyes of the dead children too, but considering how infamously strong these eyes are, I cannot leave them to be plucked by the first passing by!”

It was then that Shen found another kid, this one though only left unconscious in the middle of the blood-drenched streets and propped in a sitting position against a wall, and by his faint convulsing, he was not having nice dreams.

“Uhmm...Looks like some sort of illusion-based torture...It reminds be of the victims of the ‘ _Agony Mist’_ Drug, actually. Fascinating.” the reborn Cultivator muttered in great interest as he peeled open an eye of the kid to see his pin-prick pupils almost disappear with how far his eyes had rolled back.

“ **That was the** _ **Tsukuyomi**_ **Jutsu. It will last for a while. Poor brat.** ” a deep voice with a faint clacking undertone explained in amusement.

“And you are?”

“ **My name is Mukade II, and who are you? Pillaging corpses is not something kids are supposed to do nowadays.”** the same voice replied as a centipede crawled its way up the unconscious boy so to stand on his head and meet Shen’s eyes.

The thing had a blood-red head with long and sharp pincers big enough to close around an adult man wrist, with a thick black body long as an arm and several purple markings on its back resembling some sort of wavy writing.

“I was not aware the Uchiha had summons.” Shen answered, nonplussed.

“ **Ah! Fugako wished that was the case! Poor fool believed to be a dragon born into a human body so he always wanted more ‘** _ **treasure**_ _ **s**_ _ **’**_ **for him to enjoy! Power...Women...Summons...Techniques...He wanted it all, like a spoiled baby.”** Mukade answered with a cruel chuckle.

“I have the impression you were using him then.” the Reborn Cultivator answered with a similar, cruel smile.

“ **Great minds think alike then! Yes, I have been his guest for a couple of years, helping along a couple of ideas he had roaming inside his head, all for my gain of course, but in the end it was for noting since his oldest son has now exterminated them all** **while** **the youngest...Well...I fear he won’t be totally right in the head once the** _ **Tsukoyomi**_ **finishes its dirty work.** ”

“You seem to know a lot about their eyes.”

“ **Please!** **We Centipedes** **have been keeping tabs on the Uchiha ever since Madara threw his tantrum and left everybody else behind,** **I know everything** **! And let me tell you, the poor girl he had left** **behind** **pregnant never stopped crying for him to come back to her.”**

“What do they have to make somebody such as you waste time like this? You Summons are practically _High-Hierarchy_ Spiritual Beasts, I thought you others loathed to mingle with the inferior beings of the Mortal World.” Shen asked, honestly curious.

“ **...** **Oh! You must be** _ **him**_ **then...”** Mukade uttered in realization, now studying the boy like a rare specimen.

“What kind of _him_ should I be?” the boy asked with narrowed eyes.

“ **Several years ago something happened, and every Summoning Clan with ‘** _ **Spiritually Aware’**_ **elders went into chaos because somehow all of them** _ **at the same time**_ **had** **the same** **vision...One so horrible that** **they almost** **died** **of shock** **. I heard just a snipped from the** _ **Spiders,**_ **but the Snake and Toad Clan especially took it badly** **since they** **really went close at** **los** **ing** **one of** **their Elders for that** **. They all talked about ‘** _Blood raining from the sky’_ **and ‘** _A shadow of Evil transcending the Heavens to come here.’_ _ **...**_ **All this while having a seizure, mind you.** **All of them scared of the coming of this** **‘** _Aberration not of this world’_ **.”** Mukade answered with a sickeningly sweet tone.

“Uh-hu?” Shen answered while silently gathering his Qi inside his body.

“ **I had that vision too,** **as I inherited grandfather gift of foresight** **...And it was** _Glorious_ **!”** the centipede said with a tone of awe.

“Glorious?”

“ **Yees! It almost killed me, but I saw it! I saw your eyes, I saw your soul and I saw your POWER! And I see it now too! I** **predicted** **your awakening and divined your identity...The** _ **oracle of bones**_ **talked about a sea of blood and despair and a pale moon. This little massacre and the hundreds of people turning the ground red with their blood fit the bill, along your age and appearance here** **tonight** **! Itachi couldn’t be the one as he is too old** **and** **the little shit under me can’t** **be the one** **either because he is as much as an Uchiha you can make it...But you...Everything about your way of speaking, your knowledge and your eyes just now mark you as the real deal!** **As something** _ **alien**_ **from this world!** **”** the centipede said with a euphoric voice as it crawled down on the ground and on Shen’s body to rest on his shoulders like a living scarf.

“And I guess you want me for something?” the Cultivator said covering his hand in a faint aura of light the colour of molten bronze to grab the creature by the neck and squeeze hard.

“ **YES! YES! This is what I am talking about!** ” Mukade hissed joyously, as if feeling ungodly pleasure by the almost-lethal choking.

“And what do you need, let’s hear!”

“ **I will help you in whatever** **plan** **you are working for! People like you...MONSTERS like us, only move when there is a big prize in sight! And if you help me getting to MY prize, I won’t stop** **until** **sure you** **will** **get yours!”** the centipede answered trembling, not in fear, but excitement.

“And what makes you-”

“ _STOP WHERE YOU ARE!”_ a far-away furious voice alerted Shen that it was time to finish his collecting.

“ **ANBU! They are getting close! Six of them from West and other six from North** **and even more right behind them** **! Hurry up and leave! I recognize the** _Chakra Signatures_ **of each one of them, they are the ones that do not play nice!** ” Mukade alerted him.

“Time’s up then! I will just take away the bodies of both Clan Head and wife then, I have no time to waste collecting blood now...And a pair of Healthy bodies can also help my experiments along.” he muttered, sealing inside his sword the bodies of Fugako and Mikoto Uchiha without a second thought before disappearing into the night with his sword obediently traveling underground to follow him unseen.

If only he knew what an immense set-back his little scavenging caused to Danzo Shimura himself, Shen’s day would have brightened even more! The man simply loved to crush the dreams of possible rivals!

**The next day – Secret ROOT Base – One of many -**

“Every. Single. Eye! STOLEN! HOW!?” Danzo yelled, furious.

“We don’t know, Master. We could only find mummified corpses already deprived of eyes before ANBU arrived.”

“Itachi could not have enough time to also do that, this means somebody else knew of this operation and took the occasion to move before us! I want to know who was it!”

“We are looking into it, Master!”

“THEN LOOK DEEPER!” Danzo bellowed, making his underling hurry out to avoid his rage.

**With Shen – Wine House – Small apartment above the Shop – Shen’s room -**

Having rested well the whole night after carefully and meticulously cataloged the blood, eyes and head and everything else along the two entire corpses he collected inside his sword _Spatial Distortion_ , the reborn Cultivator calmly went through his morning ablutions before joining his father downstairs to start selling their wine.

“So tell me, what is your goal? And why you were stalking the Uchiha Clan?” he asked while bathing.

“ **For all their strength, they are easily manipulated if one knows what part of their ego to tickle,** **so we Centipedes were buttering them up in case we needed cannon-fodders** **. Fugaku especially was very susceptible to my lies, I just had to wait for him to become Clan Leader to start weaving the real stuff though.** ” Mukade answered while hanging to the wall above the boy’s head.

“And what was that you needed from him and his Clan?”

“ **Resources, mostly. I told him I was the heir of the ‘** _Centipede Summoning Clan’_ **and was cast away in fear of my power** **and s** **ince he felt that the Hokage was holding his Clan on a leash for a similar reason** **s** **, he fell for it** **and kept spending a fortune to help me develop into my adult form** **.”**

“And what is the truth instead?”

“ **The truth?** **While the plan started as a Clan-wide thing, right now** **I am the only** **Centipede** **remaining, t** **here is no** **t a Centipede** **Summoning Clan...Not anymore at least. Do you know how those clan work?”**

“Not really, I never went to a shinobi school, so I just know tidbits I could gather while asking around.”

“ **Do you know how Yakuza Clans work, then?”**

“Yes, and I know how clans in general work, since even back in my previous life I have met a few.”

“ **You went a step close at becoming a God, that takes guts,** **but** **trying a second time? That’s foolishness.** ”

“Then watch me succeed, bug.”

“ **Centipede, not bug. By the way, when it comes to Summons, as you people call us,** **there are two groups: Major Clans and** _ **Subsidiary**_ **Clans, in order: the big shots and the ones** _ **working under**_ **the big shots.”**

“Uh-hu. Just like back in my world.”

“ **My Clan was a subsidiary of the Snake Clan, all the way back when** _ **Manda’s**_ **great-grandfather wasn’t even born yet. Problem is, we were considered the lowest of the low even among other subsidiary clans, the spiders themselves were barely treated a bit better than us.”**

“Okay, go on.”

“ **We of course did not like that! Those slithering bastards acted like they were at the top of the world just because they had control over a** _ **Spring!**_ ”

“A Spring?” Shen asked, his curiosity now piqued.

“ **Two things are needed to be a Major Clan: A Summoning Realm and a** _Spring_. **A Spring is a place** **inside a Summoning Realm** **where Nature Chakra converges and solidifies, and Nature Chakra is what truly kicks-off a Summon strength and Advancement, if you control both, you are unopposed.** ” the centipede explained with a longing tone.

“And how many Springs are out there?”

“ **Three, to my knowledge: A ‘** _ **Liquid’**_ **Spring controlled by the Toads, a ‘** _ **Gas’**_ **Spring controlled by the Snakes and a ‘** _ **Solid’**_ **Spring controlled by that Slug bitch** **Katsuyu.** ”

“A single slug controls an entire Spring?”

“ **That should tell you how strong is that stuff, and do not underestimate her, Katsuyu can divide herself into infinite** **copies of herself** **she can control from afar and at the same time, she is a Clan condensed into a single being.** ” the centipede answered in begrudging respect.

“So let me guess, a subsidiary clan has minor access to this _Spring_ based on their merits, just enough to keep them in line, but not too much so to not let them get strange ideas of independence.”

“ **Right on one! I heard the ones under the Toad Clan are treated rather nice, same going with the ones subsidiary to Katsuyu and her Forest...But us others!? AH! One had to beg and lick the ground for mere scraps! And since the three Major Clans, or better, the Snake Clan and the other two, were not in good terms, switching alliance was impossible too!”**

“Especially since the Snakes would have killed whoever tried.”

“ **They did, several times at that...But still, when my grandfather became our Leader, he was determined to break free and turn us into an independent clan, and so was my father Mukade the First, so we slowly planned the thing. It was literally a suicide plan, but it had to be done.”**

“And it failed.”

“ **YES! BUT WE WENT CLOSE!”** the centipede roared with furious eyes.

“ **We staged a revolt and dragged along the Spiders, the Bats and the Scorpions...In truth when the Snakes came heralded by a young Manda eager to prove he was ready to be the next Clan Head...We Centipedes did not appear on the battlefield, we instead sneaked few of us into the Snakes den where we knew the** _ **Spring**_ **was located.”**

“And?”

“ **...** **It was a massacre, everybody died horribly, eaten alive by the snakes while the scorpions went just crushed into a pulp...The personal guard** **s** **of the Snake Elder too killed all of us, except my grandpa that by chance managed** **to dive into the Spring...I saw him then! He had become so big he could easily wrap himself around a mountain, so strong he slaughtered the guards and gravely wounded the** **E** **lder** **s** **...Then he started breaking apart,** **apparently** **without proper training one can’t absorb all that Nature Chakra.** ” Mukade narrated with a distraught voice.

“Yes, it is a common sight in Cultivation too, Elixir can help boost one’s Cultivation, but if they are not prepared the agitated flow of Qi will tear their bodies from inside-out, their flesh and spirit unable to keep-up with the exponential grow.”

“ **Yes, but I saw it! I saw what our Clan could have been had** WE **controlled the Spring! With his** **remaining** **strength my grandfather took me, barely an adult just out of his larval state, here in Konoha before the snakes could storm our small territory to finish slaughtering whoever dared to betray them...Do you know what it means watching the last member of your family die? To see life leave their eyes?!”**

“I do.” Shen answered simply.

“ **My condolences then...** **My grandfather knew his time had come, so he left me a piece of his body** **for me** **to eat before returning to the summoning realm,** **d** **eciding to try and kill as many snakes he could before succumbing. I spent my developing years eating the very flesh of my famil** **y,** **ALL BECAUSE OF THE SNAKES!”**

“So much hatred, and how were the Uchiha supposed to help you? And how I am supposed to help you?” Shen asked while getting dressed.

“ **The Uchiha were just there for sustenance and information gathering, I needed to know if somebody with a small Summoning Clan was around, a** **ny** **subsidiary one** **would have been sufficient.** **I may need a** _ **Spring**_ **to grow stronger, but is also true that eating other Summons works just as well!** ” Mukade answered with a deranged chuckle.

“Uhm...You mean absorbing the Nature Chakra infused in their flesh and blood?”

“ **Yes! It’s a damning experience, one everybody frowns upon because ‘ _Unnatural’_ or ‘ _Twisted’_...BUT SCREW THEIR MOTHERS! I want to see the Snake Clan eradicated! Destroyed! Exterminated! And I will do everything to see it happen! To be the one single-handedly killing them all! Honor? Justice? Fairness? Screw all that!”**

“ _Huhuhuhu!_ ” now...that was an evil chuckle that sent shivers along Mukade’s back.

“Let’s say that I have a way to help you. How much will you offer me in exchange?” Shen asked.

“ **Everything! You want my life? TAKE IT! My Soul? YOURS! Help me erase the Snake Clan from the face of the Earth and the Reborn Centipede Clan will be subservient to you! All of us! Every single one of us! I just want my kind to stand on the top of the world unopposed! And with a GOD guarding over us from the Heavens we will be untouchable! What is servitude if your only Master is a deity?! Help me and I will help you, we will carve our path to greatness on the blood and bones of whoever stands on our way!”** Mukade answered with a fanatical voice.

“Then so be it! Help me and be my Summon, Mukade!” Shen declared as he flared his full-power for a mere instant and focused it only on the centipede so that only he could perceive it, any release longer than a millionth of a second would have caused his body to explode as it was still unable to fully utilize his old power.

And even if it was such a minuscule instant, the centipede felt the real power of his new ‘ _Master’,_ feeling as if he had witnessed the birth of a new universe happen right in front of his eyes.

“ **YES! YES! I WANT POWER LIKE THAT! I WANT TO BE LIKE YOU! FREE! THE STRONG LIVE FREE! NO LAWS APPLY TO THE TRULY STRONG!** ” the Summon said, somehow crying fat tears even if he was a bug.

“Then follow me, my friend. Work with me and once ascended to Godhood you will be my Avatar on this world, and everybody will kneel before you.” he said, biting his thumb to smear his blood on the centipede’s back, making the markings in there shine briefly and signaling their link as ‘ _Summoner’_ and ‘ _Summon’._

“ **Now, you are telling some very sweet things...Had I been a chick, I would have swoon hard! Yahahahahaha!** ” the giant centipede answered, crawling up the offered arm to hide under the boy’s clothes.

“Just remember to not betray me, Mukade, I have been doing that _game_ for way longer than you.”

“ ** _As if! I did plan to betray you once done with the Snakes! But after seeing your true power? Fuck no! I am sticking around, I am not ‘Stupidly Greedy’ like the Snakes, there are benefits in being the darlings of a God after all!_** ” Mukade thought while shaking his head, thoughts of betrayal rapidly discarded in favour of plans to secure his position as the Cultivator’s right hand, those usually racked the greatest benefits compared to simple underlings after all.

“ **What is the first step?”**

“The first step? I need ingredients for my elixirs, those will help both me and you to advance our plans, since I have not a Spring to use, if you really want to be of use to me beside being somebody I can finally have a decent conversation with, I will need to use an alternative way to increase your strength.”

“ **And what about you? Your chakra is...Strangely lacking for somebody strong as you.** ”

“That because I use Qi, and that has its own set of exercises.”

“ **What about ingredients?”**

“Plants I have enough seeds to restart my greenhouses, but for the animal parts I will need another, more _sinister_ way to increase their quantities. But that will come later, for now I need a place where I will be free to conduct my experiments undisturbed.”

“ **Any specifics?** ” the centipede asked.

“Very spacious, isolated to the point even a fire and smoke won’t catch attention, well-hidden so to not have ninjas and the like popping in whenever they please and with a lot of rooms.”

“ **Outside or inside the Village? Because Orochimaru was evicted for his ‘** _ **Monstrous Experiments’**_ **he was doing inside the Village.** ”

“Better outside then, I will work mostly at night so to maintain the illusion I am just a kid.”

“ **I’ll ask around,** **expect me to take a while though.** ”

“No worries, I can still make the initial preparatory work in my room, the laboratory will be needed for the more important jobs.”

“ **Consider it done.** ”

“Good.” the Cultivator said with a pleased nod, barely entering the main room of the wine house before being snatched by his father.

“And my boy! He was damn close to the compound! What if Itachi killed him too, eh?!” the boy’s father Yojiro roared while hugging his son close to his chest.

“We know, we know! We got dozen of similar accuses from other Villagers, but we are working on it. As we speak, the Inuzuka, the Aburame and the Nara are working on a schedule so to have their Clan members cover the police work of the Uchiha Clan. In two weeks everything will be back to normal, have no fear.” the poor masked ANBU woman answered with a placating tone.

“Okay...Okay...But somebody is hunting that psycho down, right?” the wine maker asked.

“Of course we are! We’ll catch him and bring back his head, no doubts.” she answered.

“I think we should believe her, father.” Shen tried saying.

“Fine! I will give the shinobi the benefit of the doubt.” the old man grumbled in answer.

“Thank you.” the ANBU woman answered while patting Shen’s head, to his secret dismay.

“Good day, ANBU-san.” the father-son duo said as they watched her disappear from the shop.

“Very well! This matter is resolved, let’s go with the next one: Your wine.”

“My wine?” Shen asked.

“Yep! Just like my father before me, and his father, and his father’s father and so on so forth...It is time for you to go through your first test.”

“Which is...Making wine?”

“Exactly! I have instructed you on the proper way of storing, fermenting, steering, filtering and ingredient-gathering up until now. It is now the time for you to show me the results of your studies by producing a jar of wine yourself, without help. From that, I will see where you excel and where you need further study.” the old man answered with a proud smirk.

“It’s...A strange way to determine that.”

“You underestimate my talent, my boy! Remember how stricken people were with our last batch?”

“Yes...” Shen answered dryly, he remembered very well the clamor caused by the wine he had ‘ _fermented’_ using the knowledge of his old life, shinobi especially loved the ‘ _Sorrowful’_ after-taste that wine left on their soul at each sip, and the thing run-out in merely two days, greatly increasing their bank account.

It was ‘ _Fleeting Memories of_ _past_ _regrets’_ in liquid form able to give a catharsis-like sense of liberation to the drinker! In Shen’s old life that wine was worth its weight in gold! _OF COURSE IT WAS SUCCESSFUL_! Otherwise the people Shen stole the recipe from would not have gone knee deep in blood in recent battlefield to leave their wine there to ferment every time they needed to replenish their stock!

“Then I want you to one day get just as good, or even better than me, as it is the fate of every student to one day surpass their master! And it will make for a nice story to tell about your initial failures, it will be a bit embarrassing, but you too will laugh about it once older. God knows I still laugh at my first try at making wine! Nobody’s perfect!” the boy’s father said with a smirk as he patted his boy’s head.

…

_Nobody’s perfect?_

_We will laugh together at your failure?_

There...Shen’s pride had just been challenged…

“ _I AM SHEN LAN-YUN! I DO NOT FAIL! I DO NOT LOSE! YOU WANT GOOD WINE, OLD MAN!? I WILL MAKE SUCH A GOOD WINE YOU WILL PROSTRATE YOURSELF AT MY FEET AND CALL ME_ _ **MASTER!**_ ” the Cultivator roared inside his head with the strength of a thousand dragons, had he screamed for real, his voice would have carved the sky and turned half the planet deaf.

“I will do my best, father.” the boy simply said with a perfect innocent smile on his face, not a spark of his outrage could to be seen.

“GOOD! Go gather a jar and the ingredients then, if you need others from outside the Village tell me, we will get a Genin Team to accompany us, BUT I won’t help you. Okay?”

“Perfectly clear, father.” the boy answered, marching outside with heavy steps.

“Uuuh! You got him mad, old man!” a customer said, smirking.

“I know, that was the plan! So he will take this seriously.”

“And if he makes good wine?”

“Unlikely, he is too young for that. If he manages I swear I will take my sandals and eat them!”

“Hahahahahahaha!” at that both old men shared a long laugh.

**With Shen -**

“ **You mad?”** the centipede asked while poking his head out of the boys’ collar.

“Be quiet! I need a place quiet enough to dig a giant hole to bury an urn that will contain three smaller jars, along several hundreds of poisonous snakes and toxic herbs to add to the wine.”

“ **EH?!”**

“It is not all! I am going to prepare one of the _**Six Legendary Wines**_ : the ‘ _ **Undead Phoenix Soul-Cleansing Wine’**_! I have most of the ingredients with me already, but I will use local ones too to give the taste a more _homely_ edge using the ‘ _Wine within Wine’_ method! My honor won’t be challenged like this!” Shen answered with a growl, he initially wanted to make some mistake just to not arise suspicion...But then his father had to put down the glove of challenge, so he was now bound to answer in kind.

 _Sigh!_ “ **Then let’s go to the Forest of Death,** **i** **f you need dangerous stuff, then most of it can be found there, the rest I will hunt for you once out of the Village while you collect normal herbs** **and/or fruits** **, so nobody will notice.** ” Mukabe answered, rolling its tiny beady eyes in defeat.

**At the Same time – Coasts of Wave Village -**

A giant ship was silently circling the coasts of the tiny settlement, on board, very unfriendly sailors went through their usual jobs in utter, unnatural silence while the captain kept stealing glances to the small stub of a bridge that was being built.

“They are going fast.” the captain muttered.

“Yep! Surprisingly fast, the quality though is still top-notch. That’s shit is made to last.” the second-in-command added while studying it with his binoculars.

“You do know the Boss won’t be happy to hear this, right?”

“I am still an engineer at heart, I can’t help my fascination for a job well done. And the Boss is never happy, you know that.”

“That too is true, and if that thing really gets completed, we are gonna lose a big chunk of contracts since the new road will make deliveries and the like way faster on land compared to through the sea.”

“Yep! You think the Boss will do something stupid?” the Second-in-command asked with a sigh.

“Has he ever done anything not stupid or illegal?...Or both?”

“True...Well...We are still obliged to inform him, and it means Wave Village will have to take it for the Team. It’s a pity though, the place is nice.”

“Unfortunately the world s a whole is not a nice place instead, especially when it comes to business, those are shark-infested waters.” the Ship’s Captain answered, shaking his head in sadness as their ship kept the current route to return to their HQ.

**Ten Months Later – Konoha – Team Day -**

“Team 7 will be: Mito Namikaze, Kiba Inuzuka and Sasuke Uchiha, Your Team Sensei will be Kakashi Hatake.”

“Of course Mito-chan gets the Team with Sasuke! The Universe is a cold and unfair place after all! I got Lazy ass and ‘ _Big Boned’_ moron instead!” a blond girl said crying fat tears of sorrow.

“We love you too...” the two boys with her answered, rolling their eyes.

“Well, the _Ino-Shika-Cho_ thing is a tradition by now. It could have gone worse instead, at least Shino-san and Hinata-san look like nice people, it doesn’t mean I can’t still chase after Sasuke-kun between training meetings!” the girl’s pink haired friend answered with a sigh of elation, her own Team did not look too bad instead.

“At least work hard during training, please.”

“I will work hard, don’t worry, Shino.”

“Thank you.”

“But I wanted to be in a Team with Hinata-chaaaaan!” Kiba said with a long dog-like whine.

“They do not pair a ‘ _Stalker’_ with their ‘ _Victim_ ’ _, Dobe.”_

“I am not a stalker, I am just...A very dedicated lover, _Teme_.”

**At the Same time -**

“This is it! It’s almost time!” Shen said with a cruel _smile_ as he started digging underground to recover the big urn containing his wine.

“The last amber have all died-down, now I need to wrap it in the Qi-rich leaves I have prepared and encase the resulting cocoon into a solid block of Qi-infused ice for the remaining two months and then filter it...Done that the Wine will be ready.” he said with a smile full of glee.

**Meanwhile -**

“Hello, Itachi.” said the strange black-and-white humanoid figure.

“Who are you?” the fugitive Uchiha asked.

“My name’s Zetsu, and I wanted to talk to you about our Organization, are you interested?”

“Is not like I have any other option at the moment.” Itachi answered, sneering.

“Wonderful! Follow me, we have lots to talk about!”

**Meanwhile -**

“We got a message from Kabuto, Orochimaru-sama! As expected, Sasuke-san will be put in a Team with Mito, their Team Jounin is Kakashi Hatake. Today in fact the Team will be formalized, the papers he copied were the real deal.”

“O so very predictable, Minato-kun! Of course your daughter will go with your pupil, your most-trusted student! And of course the only other Sharingan User in Konoha had to also shoulder the job of raising poor Sasuke ( _especially considering his past with dear Obito_ )...You had no other choice but to put both my targets together! Making my job way easier.”

“We also located the other target, Orochimaru-sama.”

“The girl’s twin? Does he know?”

“No, Orochimaru-sama, his heritage has been altered to perfection. He is just the son of a wine-maker that doesn’t know why he is an orphan nor who his real parents are. Only his parents, the Third Hokage, the two Sannin and you know the truth. Not even Danzo knows.”

“Amazing! Minato-kun must love to dig his own grave! There is no other explanation! Bwahahahahaha! Keep tabs on the girl, the boy is just a wine-maker’s son now, he won’t be hard to reach and talk to when the time comes. But I need little Sasuke and Mito-chan to be safe and healthy, okay?”

“Of course, Orochimaru-sama!”

“Good, now go. I will call you when the message I am preparing for Kabuto is ready to be sent to him.”

“As you wish, Master.”

“It’s almost time for me to switch body, the perfect timing for the next stage, Hahahahahahaha!”

**At the same time -**

“Wave Village, uh? Seems like those poor bastards are resisting more than expected if we have been called to help along.”

“It seems like we will need to join the few armed forces that will soon go there to establish some sort of order, Zabuza-sama.”

“Order...Dictatorship, more likely! Well, money’s money! If they don’t want to be bought, that small asshole will take over by force, Haku.”

“The accorded time is one month, Zabuza-sama. Our client is organizing everything for a hostile take-over, we just need to act as security detail should they have some shinobi in there.”

“Unlikely, but hey! He is the one paying! Go see if the twins are open to the idea of coming with us, may as well bring along somebody that knows what they are doing.”

“I will go contact them, Zabuza-sama.”

“Good boy.”

The _Wheel of Fate_ was already turning to set every piece in motion, but none of this mattered to the Cultivator as he had other plans in mind, especially since Mukade had found the perfect place for his lab in a derelict, poverty-stricken Village known as Wave, but for now his first and foremost thought was about wine-making to win the bet against his father that in the meantime had become a matter of pride for both parties involved as neither of the two seemed open to accept any chance of the other being the victor.

So until the wine was ready, Wave could burn to the ground for how little Shen cared about the place, shutting-up his old man was way more important at the moment, that Village will either save itself or die and simply force him to look elsewhere for a secret hideout.

Only Time will tell how all those pieces will act once the board will be ready…

**A different story, I am liking the idea of writing this, is almost stimulating!**

**I hope you enjoyed, thank you for ready.**

**Have a nice day,**


	4. Wine Making.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The world may be burning, Society may be on the verge of collapsing and humans may be dying by the hundreds, But Shen has his priorities, and if to him making wine takes precedence...Then the "End of Days" itself becomes unimportant as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter about WIne. A staple of Wuxia Novels...

MC is called Shen Lan-Yun (Lan-Yun, “ 兰韵 ” means _o_ _rchid melody_.)

**The rebirth of the Evil Dragon. Chapter 4: Wine making.**

**Hokage Tower - Minato’s Office -**

“Things in Wave are becoming increasingly hectic.” Minato said while studying the thick folder in his hands.

“So it seems, and even if those men are holding the populace under constant control, somebody will soon get desperate enough to try and slip out to ask for help.” the other man in the room answered.

“It always happens, and either us or Suna will be forced to stop pretending we didn’t notice that place is under new management, unfortunately.” Minato replied with a sigh.

“If one had to be technical, their past treaty with Uzu may be translated in us being expected to lend a hand. We were considered Uzu’s closest ally...We do still feature their spiral on our official uniforms, after all.”

“Big damn allies we were...”

“You were too young at the time to help them, Lord Minato, and in the end the thing had pretty much become _**Uzu and Konoha VS everybody else,**_ and everybody in the Elemental Countries wanted a bite once heard a powerful land was under attack. The only option was helping refugees relocate here under fake identities, or help them traverse the sea towards parts unknown...Saving their land was impossible.”

“Those fools smelled blood in the water and were all drawn there. Luckily not a single secret fell in their hands, that would have been an even bigger shame. It’s the only solace I can give Kushina whenever the anniversary of her family’s death comes, that their legacy is somewhere safe and hidden away from greedy hands.” Minato admitted.

“Indeed.”

“...How are you, though? Your clan...”

“It was a needed sacrifice. Father was far too gone, too engrossed in his quest for supremacy...I believed that at least part of the clan would have been on my side when I talked to them about stopping him, but apparently his honeyed words captured every single one of them. They all attacked me en masse as soon as they were certain I was rebelling.” Itachi admitted with a frown.

“Even Mikoto?” Minato asked with a saddened expression.

“No, as I always suspected, Mother was far too pure to do such a thing. She begged all of us to stop and see things through in a peaceful manner...Father struck her down himself at that...And to my shame I almost enjoyed strangling him with my own hands.” Itachi admitted with a low voice.

“So your eyes...”

“Apparently to a **Mangekyou Sharingan** it matters not if you kill in hate, I still killed my beloved father and kin and was ‘ _Rewarded’_ with this pair of eyes, the mockery behind the gift is not lost to me.”

“What about the kids? Who killed them?”

“That escapes me, I just saw a hooded figure standing between them, then it was like Reality twisted on itself and the figure disappeared inside a strange vortex.”

“A vortex...” Minato muttered between clenched teeth, and Itachi saw cold _hatred_ blossom on the Hokage’s face as he uttered that word.

“You think it was the same man that attacked you and released the Fox from Lady Kushina?” he asked.

“That is a way-too peculiar technique to not be the same man, or at the very least a student or a clan member of his, I have been straining Sensei’s Spy Network to its limits in search for traces of that man: I know his scent, his voice, his height, the way he walks and fights and speaks and even breaths...But I still can’t find him...And now maybe he was in here again to attack the Uchiha, and for the life of me I can’t understand why!” Minato hissed in anger.

“I suspect he was here for the Sharingan eyes. Or to enact revenge, you are sure he has those eyes himself?” Itachi answered.

“I have every detail seared in my mind, that man almost took away my wife and children, I will _never_ forget a single detail of him! I saw it, that mask he was wearing had a single eye hole on it, too small for normal people to see through comfortably, but I clearly saw a _**Mangekyou Sharingan**_ glaring at me from that hole!”

“A single eyehole...Why limit his own field of vision? Even a Sharingan can’t compensate for that, a _**Byakugan**_ barely can, and the Hyuga Clan eyes have a way wider field of view than us Uchiha, but even them fear their _blind spot_ worse than any enemy. So why did he handicap himself that much? Hubris?” Itachi asked.

“He maybe had no choice. What if he only has one eye?” a new voice said as a man with wild and long hair entered from the window.

“Sensei.” Minato welcomed the new arrival.

“Spy Master Jiraiya.” Itachi did the same with a little bow added to it.

“Itachi, Minato, good morning. Nice uniform, boy.” the Spy Master and Toad Hermit of Konoha answered.

“Not my choice, it’s the Akatsuki’s official uniform apparently.” Itachi answered with a sigh.

“Akatsuki, the bastardized version of it, you mean.” Jiraiya muttered in disdain.

“Uh?”

“A story for another day. As I was saying, I gave the matter some thought, and even tried wearing a mask similar to how Minato described it, and came to this conclusion: even taking in consideration the abilities of the Sharingan, a mask design like that leaves a tiny blind-spot to the wearer, and unless we are talking about somebody with Godly abilities, in a battle to the death between shinobi, that tiny hole is as dangerous as missing a limb.”

“I wounded him quite a bit in our fight, so while extremely good, he was not _Godly_ as you called it, sensei. So he was either toying with me, or he was not as strong as Madara himself was said to be, no matter how boastful that man was about his own abilities.” Minato answered.

“Please don’t mention Madara, I never liked the idea of that man being an ancestor of mine.” Itachi begged with a growl.

“He is still your ancestor.”

“There are MANY things people don’t know about him and that are recorded in the Clan’s secret archive only...Or that used to be written there, before that same strange man burned everything down.” he answered.

“Realy? Hn! So we may have a lead. Our Mystery Man is somebody with a Sharingan eye that has used the chaos of you killing the Clan to sneak in, burn those archives and kill the children, but why?” Minato said, unsure.

“Usually when somebody of the Clan is ‘ _banished’_ they erase them from the Clan’s archives, and depending on the gravity of their crime, they were either killed or had their eyes gouged-out and THEN kicked out of the Clan. It was rare that a member of the Clan only had their eyes _sealed_ into eternal deactivation, without chance to ever use the bloodline again.”

“And the man vocally expressed his grudge against Konoha as a whole during his fight with Minato. So he may be somebody with a Vendetta against Minato himself, the Uchiha Clan and then the rest of the Village,” Jiraiya muttered, thoughtful.

“Against Lord Minato can be either because he is the Hokage, or him personally, both options are valid.”

“Fugaku forced our hand by killing whoever was against his plans for their Coup to seize Konoha, and that man somehow knew you were about to attack those rebels, so he joined the fray just to make sure the entire Clan was eradicated, children comprised.” Minato said with a shiver.

“So you believe it was somebody that got banished from the Clan, and that probably lost one eye in the process, and that now hates Konoha as a whole (and maybe Lord Minato in person in lieu of his position of Hokage) for not sticking up to him against his banishment?” Itachi offered.

“It’s a theory as good as any other, even if the time-frame would be exceptionally small considering the time between Minato’s ascension to Hokage and the Fox attack, but it would explain why his mask had only one hole, maybe he felt no reason to add one if there is no eye behind it.” Jiraiya answered with a shrug.

“Or he just hates the Hokage, independently to who has the title.” Minato added.

“That too is possible.”

“I am almost ready to bet he also hoped to use one of my father’s eyes to substitute his missing one, as a last insult to him.” Itachi said, scoffing.

“If that was the plan, you and the ANBU shut it down before he could,” Minato answered.

“That is a minor relief, but still, Danzo will be awfully happy to have all those eyes there for him to steal.” Itachi said with a growl.

“Danzo surely tried, but he got no eyes from the Uchicha.” Jiraiya answered.

“You protected them?” the young man asked, surprised.

“No,”

“Uh?”

“This is where things get strange...Apparently there was somebody else in there, a third party.” Jiraiya said, shocking both men.

“Eh?! Who!?” both men asked in chorus.

“That is the problem: we can’t tell who that was. I combed the place with Ibiki, Anko and several Inuzuka, and we can only tell that this mysterious intruder is a human male, the rest of the traces have been erased totally, he only left behind a faint smell of medical plants and other chemicals, thing that made his scent impossible to recognize...Along the smell of burning wood we recognized as coming from the Forest.”

“So whoever burned down part of our Forest of Death was there to collect eyes and blood from the Uchiha.” Minato said with narrowed eyes.

“Yes, we are certain the fire was not natural, the burning marks show that it was controlled, restricted, as if to erase traces of something. More to that, the Inuzuka found faint traces of chemicals hidden under the smell of burned wood in the Forest, along the smell of rotten matter, maybe who burned it has destroyed some important evidence. Or even a secret camp acting as his base.”

“Any evidence on the bodies of the Uchiha Clan?”

“Nothing at all. Every single body was mummified, deprived of every organ and drop of blood, leaving only empty husks behind, this was a professional...Sorry Itachi.” Jiraiya informed them, making the young man flinch heavily.

“Even...Even my mother?” he asked in dread, and to the other two men’s shock, Itachi looked small and frail, no matter his fearsome reputation.

“No, the bodies of your parents were nowhere to be found, whoever that stranger was, it’s very likely he took away their corpses.” Jiraiya answered.

_CRACK!_

Itachi’s fist left a deep indentation in Minato’s desk as he jumped to his feet.

“What do you mean!?” he growled-out.

“Those corpses disappeared without a trace, and that usually mean that they have been sealed into a scroll. Whoever that was, he was prepared, it is not the first case of graves being robbed recently with the same methods, so he must not be new to this. We are almost certain he is also a shinobi, because one of my Toads reported the presence of a summon in the area, most likely a Centipede, following closely behind the scarce traces left by our mysterious guy.”

“I was not aware centipedes were summons too.” Minato said.

“They shouldn’t, as far as the rumors go the Centipede Clan has been eradicated years ago with zero survivors, and if that’s true they would also have the stigma of being traitors since they used to be under the Snake Clan before they supposedly revolted, but I will have to ask Gamabunta for confirmation. If that is true, then we can rule out Orochimaru, he wouldn’t risk losing the support of Manda and his snakes to even just have between his men somebody linked to the Centipedes.”

“Believe it or not, I was considering Orochimaru as a possible suspect, considering he too is attracted to those eyes.” Minato admitted.

“Too many people are attracted to my Clan’s eyes...” Itachi answered, dryly.

“The modus operandi is also similar to those seven murders that Ibiki still can’t resolve, this means that we are not dealing with a serial killer, it may very well be somebody that is making some sick experiments...And that may mean that sooner or later he could start looking for more living Test Subjects.” Minato said with a grave tone.

“Please keep an eye open, as soon as you know something I beg you to inform me, I will sneak away with an excuse and help you catch this man, in the meantime I will keep you informed on the movements of the Akatsuki Organization.” Itachi asked before giving a deep bow to both Minato and Jiraiya.

“Of course.” Minato answered.

“Thank you, I know I can’t be seen here, but I want at least my mother to have a proper burial.”

“She will, Itachi. We will recover her rests.” Jiraiya offered with a small smile.

“Good. With your permission, I will be on my way.”

“...Itachi...” Minato asked with an utterly sorrowful expression.

“Yes?”

“Your little brother is obsessed in killing you, why? You could have easily pinned everything on that strange man, while instead you want to be his target?” he asked.

“I don’t want him to see the Clan as a bunch of irredeemable traitors, they were all people he knew and respected, especially our father, no matter his faults. I want him to believe the Uchiha Clan was a fierce, respectable and Honorable family. I prefer to become a Monster myself, at least once killed me, he will find peace and start anew, even if it will all be a giant lie. That is why I insisted on him focusing his hatred ON ME, nor the Village or Fugaku...Just me, if I become the vessel of his hatred, then those feelings will die with me. Or so I hope. That is why I could not pin everything on that man, he will need a clear target, not a nebulous one, a face to spit on and a name to curse.”

“And what if some day he uncovers the truth?”

“...I hope that day never comes, but should it happen...I hope he will understand I did it out of Love. Good, day, Lord Hokage.” Itachi said before leaving the office, paying extra care to not be seen by anybody.

“...”

 _Sigh!_ “It takes a damn strong Will to shoulder all that.” Jiraiya admitted with a loud sigh.

“You heard him, that’s the love of a brother.” Minato answered, shaking his head.

“That it is.”

“Why are you here, sensei?” Minato asked.

“I am just delivering the weekly report of my spies; it seems things in Wave are getting out of hand quickly, so as we suspected few people will try branching out to shinobi Villages to ask for help, Konoha comprised.”

“What do you think?”

“May as well help them, a crooked businessman playing dictator would take at best 5 minutes to remove, I am more interested in the guys he has on his payroll,” Jiraiya answered while giving Minato a small folder.

“...Ooh! This is interesting!”

“I knew you would have liked it, I was thinking that Kakashi could be a nice candidate to hunt him down, the sword can go to Mito-chan, but I know you will love to _play around_ with Zabuza.”

“I know it was just a job for him, so a mere matter of money, but trying to kidnap my wife while three months pregnant is a giant _No-no_ in my book, he needs to be _disciplined_. Mei Terumi may want him back alive, but she never specified that he had to be able to walk by himself. We’ll just deliver him on a stretcher,” Minato said with a savage smile.

“It’s shocking to see how long you can hold a grudge for.”

“You all underestimate me, sensei.”

“Be as you say. I’ll return out there to sniff around, I want to find this _Mad Scientist Wannabe_ that likes to collect corpses, I won’t let another Orochimaru go unpunished.”

“I’ll trust you, sensei.”

“You should! Have no fear, psychos like that can’t stay hidden for long, I will catch that bastard before he enacts whatever nefarious plot he is working on!” Jiraiya declared proudly.

**At the same time – Wine House – Preparation Room -**

The ‘ _Psycho’_ in question was not moving forward any nefarious plot as he had long reached his goal to kick-start his Cultivation and was now just enjoying Life at his leisure while training.

He had just now returned home from the Civilian Dojo he had been told to join, and as soon as he went through the door to his room above his father’s wine shop his mind fully focused on something to him hundreds of times more important than Itachi or the Hokage’s misgivings about his methods: _**Wine Making**_.

“I take, from your smug attitude, that the man you talked me about has took the bait?” Shen asked.

“ **It was not too hard, he was already up to his neck in troubles** **since he is a guest of Ibiki-chan** **, both me and Orochimaru** **have been** **dangling a last ray of hope in front of his eyes** **for our** **own** **plans** **for weeks, it was high time he fell for it** **. The only difference is that our offer comes free of strings attached...Or so he believes.”** Mukade answered.

“You told him what I asked you?”

“ **Of course! ‘** ** _My Partner needs a willing Test Subject for his latest super combat drug he will then sell to the highest bidder, and he needs a Specialist to showcase how miraculous that Medicine is. Once done, you will be free to do as you please and keep the Power-Up for yourself._ ’. Adding that to the weeks worth of brown-noising and empty promises I showered him with made sure he scrapped the Cursed Mark as soon as the lackey delivering it left. He is our puppet, exclusively.” **The Summon answered, insufferably smug.

“You still recovered the seal tag with that thing written on it?”

“ **Of course! I even memorized the instructions the courier left with the thing when they gave it to him.** ”

“Good.”

“ **I told you he was the kind of guy we needed! All brawn and no brain...I mean, trying to talk a kid into stealing the Village’s prized Forbidden Scroll? Ah! No wonder he failed!** ” the long Summon said with a derisive tone.

“That is why he was perfect: we offered him free Power without the implication of slavery or other ‘ _prices to pay’_ and he never smelled the trap behind your words, I would have been more surprised had he refused. I would have even accepted him using both my Elixir and the Cursed Seal, sure _filtering_ everything once done would have been an annoyance, but I still need his willing sacrifice for now, later instances can be forced along at a more leisured pace, for now I need to see if everything will work the same here like back in my original world before starting mass production.”

“ **Does every experiment of yours have to violate every Law of Nature and Decency?”** Mukade asked, looking a bit queasy.

“Racking big gains in a short amount of time requires cutting corners, and if we don’t want to cut in quality of the results, then using unorthodox methods is a must if we want to accelerate production.”

“ **You call them ‘ _Unorthodox’_...I call them ‘ _Evil’_...**”

“What was that, Mukade?” Shen asked with narrowed eyes.

“ **I was saying: What is t** **his wine of yours?”** the centipede replied hurriedly as he watched the young man unseal a giant block of perfectly-transparent ice containing his wine from inside his sword.

“Hu?” Shen muttered.

“ **I want to know w** **hat the hell are you doing.”**

“Oh! It’s simple. The giant urn that I had hidden underground surrounded by burning wood has been half filled in fruits from my old world containing high amount of spiritual energy and aromatic herbs from Konoha, all minced so to bring-out every drop of essence they contained.

Inside this urn I have then put three jars containing the three different kind of ingredients:

One contains venomous herbs and snake poison extract, both from here and my world, the fruit I also deposited in there and covered with all those toxic ingredients is special as it absorbed those toxins as it fermented, since it needs a toxic environment to mature I used those poisons to make it ripe and release its heavenly sweet aroma.

The second jar is filled with fruits from Konoha and special herbs of the _Fire_ _Alignment_ from my world: **Fire Breath, Dragon’s talon** and the **Salamander bile** herb. Medical treasures that will balance the extreme sweetness of the first urn with their sourness.

And the third...The third is the heart of the whole thing...The wine fermenting in there is made with the _Ice_ _Alignment_ in mind; **Void Realm Rice,** **Blood-Freezing Root** and many more treasures from the coldest regions of my world, places so harsh even Grand Masters have second thoughts when they have to go there. They will complement perfectly the rice we normally use for wine here.” Shen explained with a superior smirk.

“ **Isn’t this cheating? Most of the ingredients are not from this world. I swear one of those pears you used left a burning mark on the table when you put that there, and one of your herbs kept whispering to me about killing myself and let my blood feed it.** ” the centipede asked, eyeing the giant block of ice Shen was about to crack open in distrust.

“I will soon starting planting those ingredients here, so they will be officially part of this world soon, as for the rest, that just meant that the ingredients were ripened to perfection, nothing to worry about.”

“ **I am surprised you actually had industrial quantities of all that stuff.”**

“I love wine, Mukade. Both because it reminds me of my father and because just like every Martial Arts Master, I like to abandon myself to the pleasure of emptying a bottle whenever possible. So I always made sure that I had ingredients to make wine with me.” Shen answered with a small, longing smile.

“ **So in your world ‘** _ **Martial Art M**_ _ **aster’**_ **equals ‘** _ **Drunkard’**_ **?”** he asked, amused.

“Perhaps it can be simplified like that. A pity I will have to wait until I am sixteen to enjoy my favourite drink, but I guess it can’t be helped.”

Mukade was about to ask something else when he saw Shen near the block of ice to just _tap it_ with a finger…

_**BOOOM!** _

Making the ice around it explode into a fine powder, leaving behind the frozen-solid bundle of brown leaves, leaves that had completely lost their original emerald-green colour during this hibernation.

“The color is perfect! Good, it means there were no mistakes.” the Cultivator said with a pleased tone as he carefully removed the leaves.

“ **Sorry if I ask, but how is all that supposed to work?** ”

“Normally this method for making ‘ _fruit wine’_ is about fermenting ingredients separately and then putting them together, but in this wine’s case, the urn and the fruits it contains had the secondary objective to create the right ambient for the three jars inside to ferment, an ambient rich in peaceful _Life Energy_ , agitated by the fire and then _frozen_ by the ice, like that inside the urn there was an extraordinary amount of life energy, almost to the point of making it explode. The leaves acted as a _lid_ to stop the excess of life energy from leaking out, they kept absorbing the leaking energy so that it could remain confined inside the urn, without even touching the ice...My Qi infusing the ice itself was just to sate my paranoia, just in case the leaves were actually not enough, should some Life Energy have escaped, my Qi in the ice would have repelled it back inside for the leaves to absorb, continuing the circulation of life energy.”

“ **That _Life Energy_ was in a never-ending state of circulation?**”

“Yes, it actually kept slowly steering the ingredients inside the urn as well.”

“ **Sounds complicated.** ”

“It is, this is the Sixth ‘ _Legendary Wine’_ , sitting at the bottom because while the fastest to prepare ( _needing only one year to be perfect_ ) it is also the most unstable, because the high-energy ingredients it uses make its fermenting extremely fast, so the minimal error turns the entire thing undrinkable.”

“ **Faster?”**

“One year of fermenting of this wine equals to ten years of normal fermenting for a common wine.”

“ **Yikes! That’s fast!** ”

“That is why I choose it: it’s fast to make and it tastes heavenly.” the Cultivator answered as he caressed his creation with a fond smile.

The giant wine urn was securely sealed with a mud cap, so tight that no wind could travel through, this meant that not even a waft of the wine's scent could escape, thing that did nothing to curb Mukade’s curiosity.

Smirking in superiority, Shen placed one hand on the mud cap and applied a bit of pressure.

With a light " _bang_ " the mud cap was unsealed and the room was instantly engulfed with a burst of wine fragrance surging out like an explosion.

It was a mist of rich fruit wine aroma with a splash of sweet astringency, Mukade could swear he got tipsy just from that alone as the aroma was that alluring and intoxicating.

“ **Shii** **i** **t! I feel the scent** **literally** **travel through my blood!** ” the big centipede admitted.

"Such wonderful aroma! Such wonderful wine! And this is merely the ‘ _Fermenting Ambient’_ around it, but it brings back so many memories! By the way, this can be drunk as it is, even if it pales in comparison to the real wine."

Meanwhile they were talking, the first wafts of wine had reached street level, making the boys’ father perk-up with a look of dread in his face.

“Daaaaaaamn! This smell is amazing!”

“You are not helping, Toshiro!” Yujiro shrieked as more and more people stopped walking or working to hungrily smell the air.

“Hoy! Hoy! Hoy! Is it your wine? Since when it smell this amazing?” a passing shinobi asked, impressed.

“Asuma-san, please! Not you too!”

“Hey! I just asked.” the Jounin answered, taken aback by the near-crying fit of the wine maker.

**Back to Shen -**

Even though the wine fragrance was, at this point, quite impressive, it was merely scraps, just a result of the technique Shen had used to prepare the finished product.

“Now, to create the real thing!” the Cultivator said as he fetched three smaller wine jars, and used a bamboo tube to scoop out the wine nectar from the big urn and pour it into the smaller jars capped by a thin filtering membrane, making the wine nectar ripple like water for an instant before falling inside and causing its fragrance to burst forth furiously once again.

This wine nectar was almost transparent, although with a very faint pink hue, a colour that was crystallized and untainted in tone, faintly reminding the viewer of cherry blossoms.

The wine nectar from the original urn was so distributed into three smaller wine jars, until what was left in the urn were mere residues.

Carefully extending his hand into the wine urn Shen grabbed one of the jars, which looked angry-redas if it had just being took out from a blast furnace, and by the deformation of air around it, it was not just show, it was indeed supremely hot to the point of almost melting.

“ **You okay?”** the Centipede asked, worried.

“With Qi protecting my hands, I won’t feel a thing. This is the jar with wine brewed with the _Fire Alignment_ Ingredients." he answered.

The next was an ice-cold wine jar, completely covered in frost and endlessly emanating a fine mist of cold air that for an instant made the temperature inside the room drop to freezing levels.

“ **The cold one?”** Mukade asked rhetorically.

“Very perceptive.” Shen answered, chuckling as he finally took out the last wine jar. This was the jar with wine brewed with the lethal, poisonous ingredients helping the fruit inside mature, it was the only one that looked worn-out, as if the contents had almost corroded it, turning it black.

The three wine jars resting on the table looked unique in their own ways, each a mysterious world of fragrance for the observing summon, all of them still perfectly capped to hide their scent and so looking ‘ _harmless’_.

“Now...Let’s see if I did a good job.” he said as he tapped the first container.

 _Bang_! With a loud rumble, the mud cap of the red-hot jar shot to the sky accompanied by blazing flames, the fire twirling in the air for an instant before transforming into a vigorous blast of wine fragrance, the wine nectar within was blood red and scalding hot as steam kept coming out like a thick wall.

" **Wine that feels like fire! WHAT THE FUCK!?** " Mukade exclaimed in shock, and outside the shop, the fragrance somehow made whoever smelled it sweat dramatically as if exposed to a raging fire.

 _(Yujiro was now starting to feel_ _the pressure_ _…_ )

The wine fragrance of this jar alone was rich and intense enough to reach way beyond the wine store, faintly tickling the noses of people not in the immediate area.

“This one too is perfect, the others?” Shen muttered as he unsealed the Ice-cold jar next, this time causing the frozen cap to turn to dust as soon as he removed it, but the aroma did not explode violently, it slowly drifted everywhere silently like cold mist.

“ **Brrrrr...** ” the Centipede groaned as it tried to bury itself under Shen’s shirt to find some warmth.

( _The Aroma of Wine had now reached half Konoha, Yujiro was now sweating bullets.)_

“This one is good too, now…The Poison one.” Shen muttered as he targeted the last jar, this one merely produced a small cloud of purple smoke upon opening, nothing special...Although many Shinobi outside somehow felt a strange shiver of fear travel up their spine for an instant.

Having carefully removed the now Toxin-full fruit from inside the fermented ( _ **and 100% harmless)**_ nectar, Shen filtered the content in a new jar just like he did with the other two jars, and while it may have not released some majestic visual effect upon unsealing, the wine fragrance that gushed out was still so thick that it felt like a punch had landed on Shen’s face.

“Perfect! The fruit absorbed into its pulp every harmful substance, leaving behind only the taste and other nutritive substances of the other ingredients, along its own sweet taste left behind by its ripening.” he muttered, smirking.

The combined wine aroma now was like a nuclear explosion, spreading everywhere, in every corner of Konoha and the forest around it, pouring outside like an avalanche, making the faces of whoever smelt it ( _a_ _s_ _to say, pretty much the entire damn Village Population)_ gain a drunk-like complexion, there wasn’t a single face that was not blushing and trembling in tipsiness in all Konoha.

“Holy shit...This smells nice!” Minato muttered from behind his desk, him smelling wine was something that was not supposed to happen, because his personal office in the Hokage Tower had been built to be impervious to gas-based attacks.

Yujiro could now feel his butt clench as he was not sure anymore about winning the bet he had ongoing with his son.

“Fuuuck...That’s a weapon, not wine.” A hidden ANBU admitted impressed, especially since he saw a ROOT member that was spying on him swaying heavily and fall down snoring.

“What a sissy, just the smell of wine and he is out cold.” the ANBU muttered in disdain as he captured the unconscious man.

By now the store was a sea of wine fragrance, so thick it could be cut with a knife.

“ **I admit it! You made some good fucking wine! Amazing! The God of Wine!** ” Mukade admitted with a heavy slur, having literally turned drunk just with the fumes.

“What are you talking about? This is only the intermediary step.” Shen asked with a confused expression.

“ **EEEEEH?!”**

Taking a second giant urn, Shen poured into it half a jar of the pale-pink toned wine nectar from the original giant urn; afterwards, he cautiously poured-in half a jar of the blood red nectar, then half of the ice-cold nectar, and finally the poison-fermented wine nectar, so to then to mix them together.

The insides of the giant urn gleamed with brilliance, almost producing light on its own, making Shen nod in appreciation as he sealed the thing and lifted it from the ground to host it on his shoulder.

_Dong!_ _Dong! Dong! Dong!_

The Cultivator then used his free hand, coated in Qi, to strike the base of the urn four times, each time producing a loud gong-like sound while the content mixed and turned fiercely.

“...Good. This wine is finally ready. Now, to prepare the second urn with the remaining ingredients.” Shen declared as he gently put the big thing down, letting the wine inside settle to complete stillness.

“ **UNCORK! UNCORK! I WANT SOME!”** the Centipede begged while drooling.

“As you wish.” Shen replied while carefully lifting the lid, and the scent that came out was richer than ever, tens of thousands times stronger than those of the previous four wine aromas combined, a flood turbulent like ocean waves tumbling during a storm.

**Two minutes later -**

“Father? It’s time for you to taste test it...Father?” Shen asked while coming out, finding in front of himself an utterly paralyzed Village looking at him with wide eyes.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

“Just give him a moment, kiddo! Your pops is...A bit _overwhelmed_ , I think. Can I taste it too? We Shinobi have way more demanding tongues than Civilians after all!” Asuma answered with an innocent smile.

Everybody around him could tell the shameless man was spinning bullshit with the ability of a Master, but they could only berate themselves for not thinking about it sooner as it wouldn’t look nice to try wrangle some free drinks from the boy...Especially since the entire ANBU Corp that had appeared on every rooftop around the place would have fought for that position as ‘ _Tester’_ very fiercely.

There was no greater Wine consumer than an ANBU, except Tsunade Senju herself, that woman could drink half the Elemental Countries under the table if she wanted.

“As long as it’s only you two, I don’t mind.” Shen answered, and helped by the eager Asuma, a small table and two seats went positioned in front of the Wine House.

Grabbing a small porcelain dish, the young man filled it to the brim with wine from the small bottle in his hands; the result of mixing the four wines together and the stirring with his Qi had produced a wine almost transparent with a faint jade-green hue, and between that and the absurd clearness from both filtering and Qi infusion made the wine appear extremely ethereal, like the immortals’ wine served in the celestial palace of Gods.

“Daamn, it’s nice even just in looks.” Asuma admitted, inhaling deeply and gaining a blissful smile on his face, carefully bringing the cup to his lips he took a sip of the wine.

The moment when the wine passed through his lips, a cool and refreshing feeling immediately spread in his mouth, and as the liquid ran down his throat, it erupted like a volcano and a burning feeling coursed through his body.

Both Yujiro and Asuma’s eyes widened, they felt as if all of the pores throughout their entire body had expanded.

As the wine entered their stomach, both men felt as if an entire ocean had surged up and completely engulfed them relentlessly with its waves; after three such ‘ _waves’_ came and went in a row, Yujiro gave a cute little hiccup while Asuma shamelessly released a loud burp.

“ _PISS DRUNK AFTER A SINGLE DISH?!_ ” the onlookers thought in shock at seeing the two testers gaining a fiery blush on their face.

The refreshing feeling that instantly coursed through their body caused the two men to narrow their eyes and slightly bare their teeth as the faint bitterness hiding in the background like one of the snakes that were used as an ingredient tickled their tongue just as the last traces of wine descended down their throat.

"WOOOOO! That’s refreshing!" Asuma yelped in amusement.

“It really is good...” Yujiro said with a low, defeated voice, as the invigorating feeling of coldness mixed with scorching heat gave the finishing blow to his chances of winning.

" **Fire** **and ice** **mixed together!** **Amazing** **!** " Mukade, hidden inside the shop, declared stone drunk once emptied his own dish in few gulps.

“ _One sip fills the mouth with_ _blades of ice_ _, once swallowed it becomes_ _an eruption of soul-burning warmth_ _and leaves on the tongue a faint sense of numbness, but that too soon disappears, leaving the tongue clean and ready to restart the cycle!_

“ _A wine that encapsulates the cycle of Life and Death of a Phoenix! Burning bright like fire before the cold of death sets in, followed by the acceptance of the bitterness of Immortality before returning to_ _live_ _._ _This_ _is the_ _ **Undead Phoenix Soul-Cleansing Wine!**_ _One of the treasured_ _**Six Legendary Wines**_ _!_ ” Shen thought while merely showing a childish smile of happiness on the outside, nothing betraying the more sinister feeling of euphoria hidden behind his new face.

“Is it my win then, father?” he asked, perfect picture of innocence.

“…Booooo-hooooooo!” Yujiro simply answered by breaking into a desperate wailing worthy of a five-years-old, soon followed by him grabbing one of his sandals to give it a strong bite.

“FATHER!” Shen yelled with wide eyes while he tried to stop his father from eating that shoe.

The reborn Cultivator ignored the greedy looks ANBU, Shinobi and Civilians were throwing to the small bottle now secured in Asuma’s hands as he kept drinking from it with abandon, before their eyes turned to the wine store and then to each other in an unspoken challenge...Shen will worry about it later, now his priority was stopping his father from making a fool of himself.

**Later that day – With Minato -**

“So we have a plan then?” Kakashi asked.

“Yes, I already talked with Sarutobi-sensei, as soon as we get a Mission in Wave, the scroll will reach my desk immediately without passing by the Missions Office, and as soon as I get it, I will alert you.”

“And when that happens, I will o-so-casually bring my Team here for some _Whining_ about boring Missions, and you will give us that scroll with the Level lowered to C so to not raise suspicion.” Kakashi added.

“Precisely, Jiraiya will accompany you with an excuse, so when the time comes, you can go hunt down Zabuza and his palls to capture them while Jiraiya-sensei protects the kids, he will keep them occupied with some extra training. But Remember: be careful and bring them here _alive_.” Minato answered.

“Yup! I already found the _spies_ that are supposed to keep track of whoever passes too close to Wave, easy to say, my guys are now spying on the enemy spies, and with a command they will take them down,” Jiraiya supplied with a smug grin.

“Good! Just remember to keep your eyes open. Easy operation or not.”

“Please, Minato! Only a fool believes their plan will go off without troubles.” Jiraiya answered with a snort.

“We’ll be on our toes, Minato-sensei. Unless a catastrophe happens, we will be ready for everything.” Kakashi said with his only uncovered eye ‘ _Smiling’_ at the Hokage.

“I’ll count on you all.”

**At the same time – With Shen -**

“ **Bad news!”** Mukade hissed in anger as soon as he entered the boy’s bedroom.

“Uh?” Shen asked, annoyed at the interruption of his pill concocting.

“ **I just checked in Wave, do you remember that fat midget I talked you about?** ”

“The money-hungry fool? What has he done?” the reborn Cultivator asked.

“ **Apparently he wants to demolish an entire side of the Village to build a villa for himself in a secluded corner of the place, and that in itself would not be a problem, but he also wants to burn down part of the woods _behind_ those houses to create his private golf course...Meaning that the house I told you about will likely be destroyed…And I fear few citizens are talking about asking for help to Konoha.”**

“You mean that the only place that was optimal for my plans could be destroyed just to appease the ego of a sub-human?” Shen muttered with a low tone.

“ **Pretty much, but a** **re you not worried about ninjas also being there?** ” the Centipede asked.

“Let them kill each other if they want, their squabbles are not worth my time, I just want to dissuade that moron from demolishing my future base. Very Well, how long before he begins construction?”

“ **Three** **weeks** **, then they will start demolishing and burning everything...Why?** ”

“Three weeks, good, I am not in a hurry then.” Shen answered while taking out from the sword _Space Distortion_ a small block of pale-white wood.

“ **Eh?”**

“We are going to Wave, Mukade. While those ninja will fight between themselves, I will make sure this Gato will learn what a mistake is to displease me, it will also be a good excuse to survey the house myself and plan the renovations needed for my necessities.” the Cultivator answered with a cruel smile.

“ **Oh!”**

“It will also help the two of us, I plan to keep several of those men alive for experimentation, now that my body is in harmony with my Qi it’s time for both me and you to increase our strength, and we need Test Subjects to make sure there won’t be downsides.”

“ **Oooh! Nice! I can’t wait!”** the small Summon answered with a gleeful tone.

“Nice to hear. Get ready, we depart in a week.”

“ **As you wish, Partner!** ”

As Kakashi had feared, a catastrophe was indeed nearing Wave, whatever anybody liked it or not.


	5. Vision

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The wheel of Fate keeps turning, and a new warning is issued to the Mortal World about the "Interlopper" that is trying to usurp the natural order and Ascend to Godhood.  
> A new Vision is sent by the Gods to the holders of Foresight in the Elemental Countries.  
> The Gods are getting desperate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> MC is called Shen Lan-Yun (Lan-Yun, “ 兰韵 ” means orchid melody.)

**Wave Village – docks -**

A short man wearing an expensive suit was looking at an approaching huge ship with a frown on his face, his knuckles having long turned white with how hard he was clasping the walking stick in his hands, almost cracking the tacky giant fake jewel topping it.

“They are late.” the man, Gato, hissed in contempt.

“You get what you pay for.” the very tall man with a masked face standing next to him answered with an amused chuckle while shouldering the giant meat-clever-like sword he was holding.

“The mark of a good businessman is knowing when the ratio _Price-Quality_ is perfectly balanced, or even slightly slanted in their favour. They were _cheap_ , so to speak, but this group was still pretty renowned in Mist Village as the bane of their existence. And it was actually you to suggest them, remember?” Gato answered.

“I can’t deny that, they actually lowered the price because you promised them they could cover the difference by plundering this place for a day before _‘Behaving’_ and act as the guards you needed until your business with that bridge was concluded.” Zabuza answered with a non-committed shrug.

“Exactly...Although they seem far from being the loud mess of hoodlums you described them as.” Gato admitted as soon as the ship got close enough to let them hear the absolute silence coming from it.

“...That’s because something’s wrong.” Zabuza answered with narrowed eyes while he forced the short man behind him with his free arm.

“Uh?”

“Hide behind your goons. Haku!” the Missing-Nin hissed with a low voice.

“They are not slowing down.” a young man with very feminine appearances appeared from an ice-made mirror to join Zabuza’s side.

“Yeah, there is nobody at the helm.”

“VACATE THE DOCKS!” Gato screamed as the ship kept moving at high speed towards them with nobody in sight to govern it.

“Cowards.” Zabuza sneered as he watched the businessman and the hired goons run away screaming just as the ship started demolishing the long dock and forcefully move aside the small fishing boats anchored there.

Contrary to them though, the former Swordsman of Mist Village merely took a step back, and as he had evidently gauged, the ship finally stopped moving once more than half of it touched ground, making its massive front stop at barely an inch of the man’s nose.

“Be on high alert, something happened mid-travel: the messenger bird I got from them was authentic and this means that up to a third of the way things were still normal.”

“So they were attacked before they reached us here?” Haku asked.

“I know those fools, once paid, they take their job seriously, and this silence is not normal; better be safe than sorry...If they are just piss drunk and forgot to be on a ship, no matter how unlikely, we can just scold them and forget the incident...But if instead another ship, or worse, hunter-nin, attacked...”

“Then we must act cautious, I got it, Master.” Haku answered with a nod.

“Good, cover my back.” Zabuza uttered as he jumped all the way up to walk on the ship’s deck.

_Tap...Tap...Tap...Tap..._

The only noise on that ship were the feather-light steps of both ninja as there was an unnatural silence all around them, as if the entire thing was utterly deserted, and yet, broken weapons were littering the place along various and wide splashes of blood here and there, even one of the massive masts missed a big chunk of it, making it a miracle if the thing was still up by itself; the helm itself had been uprooted and used as an improvised projectile as the two shinobi saw it deeply embedded in the smaller mast, almost piercing it all the way through.

“There was a battle here, a damn wild one.” Zabuza muttered while looking at the scene with calculating eyes.

“Every weapon has been cut cleanly through, Master Zabuza, same for the mast and the various cutting marks covering the deck in its entirety, whatever did it, it cut everything on its path like tofu.”

“Clean cuts? Wind Jutsu then?” the swordsman asked, curious, as he studied a lone human hand forgotten in a corner.

“That or a very sharp blade, but wind jutsu vaporize the first spurt of blood when they cut, a blade does not, no matter how fast you swing it...Unless you are a super-human that can cut things so fast they don’t _notice,_ then the splotches of blood are more sudden and irregular _._ I am more inclined towards the use of a bladed weapon, especially since the sprays of blood follow an arch.” Haku answered.

“True. This too is a clean cut. Must have been some damn good swords they used.” Zabuza answered, throwing the lone hand overboard and into the water with an uninterested grunt.

“Swords? Plural? How many do you think they were?”

“Hard to say, surely more than two since I refuse to believe it was a single man doing this, but not too many: the foot-marks are all clustered together, meaning that most of the crew focused on a single objective at a time.”

“Why not a single man?”

“I know most of the guys that would be able to do this: most of them would have made an utter bloody mess if they fought with their weapons, the remaining ones on my list would have pulverized this thing with their techniques while killing the men onboard, especially in case of the ninjas I know of that are still affiliated to any major Village. This is the job of a professional, and the crew itself was the target, not the ship.”

“So, Hunter-nins?”

“Who else? Either them or Ronins. I don’t see a run-of-the-mill nobody fight against a crew of one hundred bloodthirsty maniacs with a couple palls just for the thrill of it. But even then, this fight is still even too _clean_ for either options...”

“Clean?” Haku asked, confused.

“No bodies in sight and the ship has not been burned. A Hunter-nin would have just collected the heads and left the bodies behind. A Group of Rogue Samurai would have collected the heads AND burned the ship, even just to honor the fallen, criminal scum or not...But here I don’t see a body left behind and ship is still standing, albeit ready to fall to pieces. This is strange.”

“Maybe they threw the bodies overboard?”

“No sign of blood on the railings nor dragging marks on the floor, nobody collects corpses when just the head is widely accepted to collect a bounty...And even then, why do that and then leave the ship behind? Especially since there may be evidences still around to track them down. Even if the attackers mistook it for some rich merchant and so expecting it to be filled in goods, once seen no money or stuff were on board they would have at least took the ship as a _collateral_...”

_Thunk!_

It was then that they heard a muffled sound come from the ship’s belly, making the two snap to attention and take their fighting stances.

“We are not alone.” Zabuza growled.

“I’ll watch your back, Master.” Haku said.

Nodding to each other, the two slowly descended the half-destroyed staircase towards the belly of the ship to see even there utter chaos and destruction...And an obscene amount of barrels of black powder that had all been opened and upturned and a broken oil lamp ( _the source of the noise)_ with its still-burning oil slowly moving towards the spilled powder…

“IT’S A TRAP! RUN!” Zabuza, eyes wide in horror, screamed just as the flames finally reached the black powder.

_**KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!** _

It was awe-inspiring, an instant the giant ship was there, and the following one an immense ball of fire swallowed it whole, snapped it literally in half, and  then  covered it in its entirety in flames, it was clear that once finished burning nothing will remain of the entire thing, thus destroying every evidence.

“ _Unf! Unf! Unf!..._ That was way too close. At least we now know why they left the ship alone.” Zabuza, covered in soot, huffed as he watched the thing burn from safe distance.

“Somebody was waiting for us in there, and broke the lamp as soon as we jumped on the deck.” Haku, he too blackened by the explosion, said with narrowed eyes.

“How can you tell?” Zabuza asked.

“There was a hole on the side of the ship, and I swear I saw a fluttering of white cloth an instant before we had to escape.” Haku answered.

“It always surprises me to hear you use those sharp eyes of yours, so our culprit left behind a farewell gift for us...Eh! I would have done the same, cheeky bastards.” Zabuza admitted with a chuckle.

“What happened?!” Gato yelled in anger.

“Your investment just went up in smoke, maybe you should try buying new goons and demolition equipment, Haha!” the swordsman answered with a short laugh.

“I can see that...” Gato answered with an annoyed grumble.

**Not too far away -**

A solitary figure was standing on the flat side of the blade of his sword and looking all the way down to the scene with a satisfied smirk hidden behind his pure white wooden mask representing an old man’s face; the problem was that he was standing at several feet from the ground, flying.

His fluttering, pure white robes whipped slightly in the early morning wind as he watched the sun finally finishing peaking from the horizon and cover everything in golden light, giving to his figure a godly appearance, especially with how straight his back was as he watched the world under him.

“I am impressed, they managed to escape, and that boy even caught a glimpse of me, at least there is _SOME_ talent between the ranks of that buffoon, they may even be worthy of better treatment from me, ah!” the figure said with a cold and amused chuckle.

“ **So you** **weren’t** **try** **ing** **to kill them?** ” a second voice asked as a long centipede big like a human arm crawled out of the figure’s bosom to coil loosely around their neck like a creepy living scarf.

“It was a small game, if they died the thing would have ended there, their escape just means that they deserve a closer look from me, nothing more.”

“ **Small detour aside, was the house** **I found** **what you looked for?** ”

“It is smaller than what I expected, but the hidden rooms behind the fake wall of its basement will do fine. Tell me again, why a woodsman needed to go to such extent to hide those rooms?”

“ **My best guess is that** **he** **had a side business beside wood-** **carvings, what you found in that hidden basement was a registry normally used by merchants to catalog their goods. Probably the guy used to sell and hide ‘** _ **Less-than-Legal Merchandise’**_ **thanks to how far away, secluded and hidden the house is, the registry was encrypted to hell and back too, that is a telling sign as well.”**

“The place was in state of abandon, so the owner may have died long ago, or just left in great hurry. It matters not, now that house belongs to me and thanks to Gato I have the proper test subjects I needed. I will take it as a payment for the nuisance I had to endure that forced me to come here. The rest will come later.” the figure muttered with an austere tone before zooming away and towards Konoha while still riding his sword.

“ **Those guys...Wouldn’t have been better to kill them?** ” Mukade the centipede asked, grimacing.

“Perhaps, but I still need them to refine the more complex pills, if we want to reduce to zero the risks of using those elixirs, this is the best way.”

“... **Using living humans to** _ **filter**_ **them** **is the best way** **?”** Mukade asked with a low voice as they were already half-way to Konoha.

“They are still alive, and since they are neither Cultivators nor Ninja, losing their _dantians_ and chakra pathways won’t be a huge loss. They are doing a great service to the two of us, so they shouldn’t hold it against me if I forced them a little to do a good deed.”

“ **You cut off their arms and legs…”**

“I didn’t have big-enough urns to hold their entire bodies.” Shen answered, nonplussed.

“ **You also cut off their tongues...”**

“They kept screaming, sooner or later somebody would have noticed they were in that basement. And the Medicines taste awfully bitter, I just spared them the hassle.”

“ **Shen...** ”

“Yes?”

“ **You have a damp secret basement filled with one hundred adult men without arms and legs trapped up to their necks in sealed urns filled in chemicals...Humans you drugged into total incoherence you have then forcefully gorged in strange pills and tablets. How are they supposed to eat? Or even relieve themselves?”**

“The urns have the function of keeping them alive, other than making sure their bodies WILL absorb the nutrients of my Pills and Elixirs and store them into their livers. Once ready, I will cut them open, recover the raw purified materials to create the upgraded version of those Elixirs from their livers, sew them closed and heal them so that the cycle will start anew once changed the urns’ content with fresh chemicals. As for their relief, I shoved two tubes up their sphincter and urethra leading deep underground where nobody will notice the smell. It was very unpleasant for me.” Shen answered with a scrunched nose.

“ **Unpleasant**. **..For you?”** the lone Summon asked in disbelief.

 _Sigh!_ “I am aware that what I did is against every law, other than being utterly deranged and Evil. I won’t hide behind false ideals, the memory of my original father’s death or any other excuse, I am Evil, I am rotten and I am scum. That I was, that I am and that I will always be...I hold the weight of my sins on my shoulders nor with pride or shame and I won’t pretend people to have sympathy for me, but I intend to move forward towards my goal: Godhood. Not because I need it, but because I WANT IT.” Shen answered with a long sigh.

“ **You want it? That’s all?** ”

“...I am afraid of death, Mukade. Only the strong are free, and absolute strength means absolute freedom, unfortunately there are existences that rule over even the strongest...”

“ **The Gods.** ”

“Yes, I came here because the Gods of my old world broke their sacred rule and intervened directly, and that enlightened me to a truth I had failed to grasp: that my dream of Godhood would have been short-lived even had I managed, because those fools would have done their worst to stop me.”

“ **So why are you trying again?** ”

“As soon as I was reborn here, I understood that if I wanted to succeed and be truly free then the Gods as well had to go. And only a God can kill a God.”

“ **So you plan to kill the Gods?** ” Mukade asked, unnerved.

“Not the Gods of _THIS_ world, as no matter how bad my reputation is, I never went on a killing spree without a reason, so unless the Gods of this world do something to put them in my enemy list, they will have nothing to fear...And they know it, otherwise, they too would have struck me dead as soon as my Soul, Mind and Qi took over this body.”

“ **That is a bold statement, you are literally threatening them...If they exist.** ”

“You are not a believer?”

“ **Not really, after years spent praying for a miracle that would have freed my Clan and watching those prayers go unanswered every time, my faith took a dive.** ” the centipede answered with a shrug of its many legs.

“Blindly hoping for somebody else to save you is not exactly the proper way to do it.”

“ **I was young and foolish, give me a break.** ”

“As it stands, the Gods of this world, if they exist, know that my aim is revenge on another realm, after that...I will enjoy my Godhood here in this world, I don’t need worshipers or prayers.”

“ **So you will be a God spending his days making wine?”** Mukade asked, unable to grasp the fact that somebody reaching ultimate power would then return to a humble life.

“Hahaha! That would be life, isn’t it? An eternal life for me to enjoy at my leisure doing nothing besides whatever pleases me with no fear of old age, death, disease or misfortune! I will finally be able to relax and enjoy life, but for that, I need to first break free of the shackles of Mortality, and if in order to do this I have to become the worst scum, a Devil, then so be it! I AM SHEN LAN-YUN! The _Evil Dragon Swallowing the Heavens!_ HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” the reborn Cultivator answered before letting his glee run free and his blood-chilling laugh cut the sky in two.

**Mount Myoubokuzan – Elder Toads Abode -**

“ **AH! Aaah...Aaah...”** a Giant, incredibly old Toad gasped for breath as he grabbed his head in pain.

“ **Hoy! You okay?”** a tiny old toad asked, his narrowed eyes studying the elder toad face in great detail.

“ **A vision?** ” an elderly female toad asked at the same time.

“ **Orchids...Music...Giant eyes...H-Hundreds of steps...A C-C-Centipede! D-D-Dragon!”** the old Toad gurgled-out with a gasp before his giant body went limp and he fell down.

“ **NO!** ” the male Toad screamed as he hurried at his side.

“ **Is he...Dead?** ”the female one asked in dread.

“ **His heart gave-in, it must have been a terrible vision.”**

“ **Gamabunta!** ”

“ **Shima! Fukusaku! What happened!?** ” another giant Toad, this one way younger, asked in worry as soon as he entered the area and saw the scene.

“ **Send a messenger to Jiraiya, tell him what happened, in the meantime we will try to understand what the snippets he told us mean and if they fit with the other visions he had.** ” Shima ordered.

**At the same time – Snake Summoning Clan Summoning Realm -**

“ **GYAAAAAAAAH!** ” a loud cry of anguish fell in the entire land and every snake turned their head towards the caves housing the Elders of the Clan.

“ **Lady Obaba! Lady Obaba!”** One of the Elders was heard scream in horror.

“ **Clan Boss Manda pays his regards to Elder Yamata** **and Elder Obaba** **, what is happening?”** Manda, the Boss of the Snake Summons asked, having immediately neared the cave as soon as the scream came.

“ **Lady Obaba has had** **a** **vision and is now dead!** **The same vision that almost killed her before, now took her away from us!** **Find the responsible! We want to devour them! NOW!”** the remaining Elder ordered with a scream filled in madness, having almost lost her sanity at seeing her sister die in front of her with such a horrified expression frozen on her face.

“ **Who are we looking for?** ” Manda asked immediately, usually the Elders were happy to stand out of Clan’s affair, but as his father taught him: _if an Elder gives an order, you obey, no question asked._

“ **The Vision was the same as the one she had a decade ago! But a new detail was added to it now! A disgusting new detail!** ”

“ **Lady Elder?** ” Manda asked, confused.

“ **A Centipede is still alive! Find whoever that bastard is affiliated with! The** **new** **vision was about a giant Centipede trampling us while a white figure rode their head! Find that Centipede and their Master and bring both to us! WE WANT TO GORGE ON THEIR BLOOD! WE WANT THEM BOTH ALIVE FOR US TO KILL! THEY MUST DIE! DIE! DIE!”** the Elder bellowed without a shred of sanity in her voice.

“ **It will be done.”** Manda answered with a small bow of his head, and without even bothering to hide the sneer on his face.

“ _ **A Centipede?! One of them managed to gouge-out one of Father’s Eyes...Finally I will be able to avenge his honor!**_ ” the giant Boss roared inside his mind.

“ **I want every maggot under our control to keep an eye open! And every sensor and scout we have to comb the Elemental Countries! That traitor can’t have escaped too far! Find him! Find him! FIND HIIIIM!”** Manda roared, making every snake and other critter scamper away to obey, fearing harsh punishment should they take too long to spring to action.

“ **Find him? Do you know who they are?** ” the Snake Elder asked with a sickening hungry tone of voice.

“ **Only one name crosses my mind, the only Centipede I know may have escaped the slaughter: MUKADE!** ” Manda answered, spitting the name in disgust.

“ **THE GRANDSON OF NOBUNAGA! THE BASTARD THAT DARED TO KILL OUR BROTHER! HOW COME HIS DIRTY OFFSPRING IS STILL ALIVE!?** ”

“ **Even scum can get lucky once, Lady Elder.** ” Manda answered with a sneer.

“ **His luck lasted even too long! Bring him to us!”** the Elder ordered with a sharp voice.

“ **It shall be done, Lady Elder.** ” Manda answered, even too eager to fulfill that order.

Nobody in the general chaos that had befallen in the Snake Summoning Realm noticed a small bat looking at the scene with narrowed eyes before secretly leaving for the human world, he knew his old friend Mukade will appreciate the news about what happened, especially since whoever he had formed a contract with could produce those miraculous pills able to increase one’s strength in exchange of spying on everybody there, this report will surely net him _two_ pills this time!

A pity that nor that bat or the other Summons from Subsidiary Clans double-crossing their kin in exchange of those pills knew that they were willingly offering themselves to Shen as guinea pigs, unknowingly helping him concoct the Elixirs he will soon start using on Mukade to increase the Centipede’s power once sure every downside had been removed, they were willingly poisoning themselves in exchange of a minimal increase of power, and amusingly ( _For Shen himself),_ they were even grateful for it!

Unaware that their sacrifice will be used to create medicines thousands of times stronger than the ones they were killing themselves with and that they will never use, they all still flocked to Mukade to sell out their Clans’ secrets, fighting over themselves to be the first to report the best piece of news.

**Demon Village – Temple -**

“LADY SHION! LADY SHION!” a guard yelled frantically as he held the young priestess in his arms while she convulsed heavily.

**Vision -**

The young girl was walking alone through a giant garden filled in orchid flowers, and if at first she thought there was only silence around her, a far-away soft melody of a flute faintly reached her ears to accompany the heavenly flower scent surrounding her.

It was then that her vision switched abruptly and went filled by a thick wall of pure-white mist that completely obscured her view, but she still pushed forward until the sound of grass under her feet went suddenly substituted by wet crunching noises and the air filled by the horrid stench of death.

“Ah!” she shrieked when she finally walked out of the mist: all around her the garden had become an endless field of broken bones and blood, the orchids were still there, but now popping out from the empty sockets of the skulls littering the ground and still dripping viscous red blood from their once delicate petals.

_Cruch!_

The sudden noise made her turn around to lock eyes with an enormous Centipede, one big and long enough to easily wrap itself several times around a mountain; the thing was munching on a giant snake skull that still looked _“tiny”_ compared to the absurd sizes of its pincers, and all around the beast, the priestess saw thousands of similar snake skeletons the monster kept picking up to devour with gusto without breaking eye contact with her.

“...” A strange human figure stood on the head of the monstrous centipede, featureless and made completely of pure white light, Shion saw the figure somehow ‘ _lock eyes’_ with her before breaking into thousands of small light particles slowly fading away as they floated up into the air.

It was then that the  _background_ moved, and  the girl’s heart stopped as she finally understood that behind that absurdly big Centipede another snake-like being was resting, only to wake-up once  felt Shion’s presence...

There were no words to describe how big that creature was, that chinese dragon was simply too big for mortal’s words to properly frame, each scale of its body dwarfed every mountain or city on the entire planet, one just could not see the top of its body or how long the body was, her entire field of view went filled by one of the creature’s eyes only, as if that alone was big enough to fill the sky.

Then the dragon roared, rupturing the girl’s eardrums and causing blood to rain down on her from the black clouds hanging above while the monster itself gave a feral swipe with an immense claw that teared her body to shreds in an instant.

**Real World -**

It was at that point that the girl finally woke-up, puked and curled into a ball to cry incoherently, feeling a fear she had never felt before, unable to even register the dozen of people hurrying to help her, it was a miracle in itself if she was alive, but the terror that was overcoming her wasn’t certainly any better.

**Two Weeks later – Konoha – Hokage Tower -**

“Other two attacks?” Minato said with a raised eyebrow once red the report in his hands.

“Yep! Every time Gato had a ship of people and demolition equipment arrive, the thing crashed onto the docks with no crew nor materials inside, or it arrived already on fire with everything on board already lost. That short bastard is getting really angry, and as a reflex, the population of the place has become really scared. Listening to my spies there, in the chaos of Gato’s latest delivery incident somebody managed to sneak out to probably come here.” Jiraiya answered.

“It makes sense, we are the closest Village, and a clandestine outing to seek help requires the shortest path between them and possible salvation. How long before they get here?”

“Considering we are talking about an old man...I guess another day at least, even with my guys making sure he finds a safe path in front of him.” the Spy Master answered.

“Good, Kakashi too says his Team is ready enough for a Mission outside. You sure you can handle this, Sensei?” Minato asked.

“I already briefed Kakashi on both Zabuza and his little apprentice Haku. Ice Bloodline or not, they will be ready: it will be a good _Wake-up Call_ for the Genin about the true risks of this life-style, but with me there, we will reduce the risk to their life to zero...Not that they know I will save them at the last possible second.” he answered, smirking.

“We are still talking about my daughter here.” the Hokage warned him.

“Eh! And you think I will let my Goddaughter die? You fool! I know very well that if something happens to Mito then you, Kushina and Tsunade will pull me inside-out, literally, this should you stop me from doing it to myself personally out of grief. Give me some credit, I was doing this job for way longer than you!” Jiraiya answered with crossed arms and a disgruntled expression.

“Good to hear.”

“Changing topic: any new lead on our mystery guy?” the Toad Sage asked.

“You mean the grave robber with a centipede Summon?”

“Precisely.”

“Nothing new, they have been laying low lately, meaning that _**for now**_ what they took from the Uchiha and those graves has been enough for them, but we are keeping our eyes open for their possible next job.”

“...” at that the old man let out a long sigh.

“What’s wrong, sensei?”

“ _Uhrrm_...Gamabunta is pressing me for details himself, the Toads want me to bring them whoever is partnered with that Centipede to ask them some questions. This smells fishy.”

“Uh?”

“Both Ma and Pa are convinced that the centipede that was added to the Elder’s Vision was not a metaphor, but a literal warning about somebody linked to those Summons.”

“You know I don’t exactly believe in Prescience, Sensei...” Minato answered, unsure.

“I am not a believer myself, but if the exact same Vision comes up with a ten year interval and only gains a tiny difference, in this case a new character, I too start to have second thoughts. And Gamabunta seems convinced that having the same Vision twice or more times makes it a Warning of something that _**will happen**_ more than a heads-up about something that will _**probably**_ happen.”

“And of course, taking measures to avoid it, makes it happen faster.” Minato said with a tired sigh.

“They don’t call it _self-fulfilling Prophecy_ for nothing, Minato.” Jiraiya answered with a similar tired expression.

“Let’s say the Toads really had an honest-to-God Prophesy-”

“And Katsuyu herself, and probably the Snakes too...And the Cats Clan, the Boars, the Spiders, the Sharks, The Monkeys ( _Sarutobi-Sensei confirmed it through Enma)_ , an entire temple of Monks in Iwa’s mountains, a Priestess in Demon Country, a so-called _f_ _raud_ in Wind country’s Capital city, and the -”

“I got the picture, Sensei.” Minato, looking a bit overwhelmed, interrupted him before the list could grow any longer.

“I am not sure they all got that vision at the same time, but the guys I have stationed there and the few friendly-enough/Gossiping-enough Summoning Clans open to questions all confirmed the same key details: A pure-white humanoid figure riding a giant Centipede, lots of orchid flowers, music, Death and Gore to disgust a Jashinist and then a Dragon so big to swallow the sky.”

“Okay. Let’s say all this is _Legit_ , somehow...What is this warning about?” Minato asked.

“Well, death and destruction are pretty telling.”

“I can get up to that point by myself, Sensei.” Minato said with a deadpan tone.

“The fact that the Centipede is munching on Snakes bones is what sells it as an actual centipede being a factor instead of a metaphor: Many Summoning Clans confirmed that technically there was a Centipede Clan, a _subsidiary Clan_ of the Snakes that Manda and friends slaughtered after a failed rebellion, if even just one of them survived, seeking revenge on the entire Clan is not out of the question.”

“And that part of the Vision may mean that they can/will succeed and eradicate Manda and his peers, and if they too had that Vision, Orochimaru as well may be getting an earful about finding that survived traitor.”

“That I suspect, and that is also confirmed by the lingering traces of a Summon we found during the investigations in the Uchiha Compound. The eyes had been surgically removed, meaning that our wandering Summon has a Partner now...And that Partner may be linked to the orchids and the music.”

“You sure?”

“I asked Inoichi Yamanaka for help. Normally Orchid are accosted to _Beauty, Charm, Refinement_ and _Good Fortune_. But also he made me realize something: Orchids are flowers from ‘ _outside’_ , they do not grow here naturally, they were firstly imported by merchants from oversea and became popular with the first Daimyos becoming obsessed by them.”

“So?”

“So the Vision contained a rare flower, ergo something _unusual_ , _something that symbolize good fortune growing thanks to ruin._ Ibiki seems convinced it means that whoever those flower symbolize, they may be an outsider, and that they will get their fortune on the blood of everybody else.”

“And how are we supposed to find our guy?”

“I tried to take it literally, to be honest.” Jiraiya answered with a smirk.

“Eh?”

“Here: _Ransetsu._ Three Ninja Clans have that name in Iwa, then there are two Samurai Clans called Ransetsu in Iron Country and four Civilian Families with that surname appear in the Elemental Countries census, one of those families are actually here in Konoha.”

“Ransetsu? _Ran_... _Setsu..._ _Orchid_ and _Music._ THAT’S TOO LITERAL, SENSEI! _”_ Minato yelled, enraged.

“Too literal?”

“Yes! Next you’ll tell me you took the dragon literally ( _Ryu_ ) and searched for anybody called like that!”

“...” the Sannin had the decency to look bashful and blush at that accuse.

“Oh, my God!” Minato yelled in disbelief while facepalming.

“It sounded like a good idea on paper...” the old man admitted with a shy whisper.

“Just drop it, Sensei. I already don’t believe in Prophecies and the like, and watching you chasing ghosts hurts, because I know you are better than this.”

“A lot of people and Summons had the same Vision around the same time, there must be a shred of truth to it...” Jiraiya tried saying.

 _Sigh!_ “Fine! Let’s say it’s legit, just look at the symbolism then, we have a mysterious killer with a centipede summon, but a Centipede has its own meaning. Look at the various symbols that appear if you really must, but do not waste energies on this, because there are way more pressing matters to take care for.”

“Maybe you are right, I’ll see if maybe is all about symbolism...”

“You can also try to see if any Clan Symbol matches.” Minato offered with a kind smile.

 _Sigh!_ “These peaceful times are getting to me, I am starting to see patterns and secret codes everywhere...” Jiraiya admitted with a tired expression.

“Your generation grew in one of the worst moments of our history, you have nothing to feel guilty about.”

“Yeah, at least I am not a bad case like Danzo, if you listen to him you will believe a new Ninja World War will start any minute. If you need me, I’ll go check my guys’ reports, then maybe I’ll get some dango and distract myself with a visit to the bathhouse.”

“Sensei...”

“As a customer, not for research. Relax! Hahaha!” Jiraiya answered with a wide smile and a jovial laugh before leaving the office.

**Not too far away from Konoha -**

“Ahh! Ahh! Ahh!” an old man wheezed as he finally stopped running once a far away dot appeared at the horizon, a dot he knew was the entrance to the forest surrounding Konoha.

“Almost...Almost there...Oh, God I feel like puking! I hate being old...” the old carpenter gasped while clutching tightly the side of his chest in fatigue.

“Okay, Tezuna, just a little bit more and you will get help, you can do it! You are not some old geezer! Just put the old bones back in action!” the man said to himself as he started again to run towards the Village.

Unknown to him, from under a small cluster of rocks a very long and big centipede with its carapace covered in thick writing-like markings came out to look at the old man’s retreating back.

“ **This is bad news, Shen wanted to remove Gato without too much of a fuss, but if the ninja of Konoha get involved, there is no telling if his lab in Wave will remain secret. I need to alert him immediately.”** Whatever happiness Mukade felt at his increased sizes and power thanks to the Cultivator’s Elixirs immediately soured at the thought of his Partner’s foul mood once alerted of this new development.

He was now almost long enough to wrap himself twice around an adult human torso and easily swallow the victim’s head whole in a single bite, and yet, he still felt utterly small when compared to Shen, especially when the Cultivator was in a dark mood after the news of a new round of Visions centered around him reached his ears thanks to the various spying Summons sharing their knowledge with them in exchange of the man’s pills, and now this mess with Gato and Konoha was certain will get Shen into the “ _ **furious”**_ territory.

“ **The only solace is that he will express his anger on those poor bastards...Whatever, is not my problem.”** Mukade muttered with a sigh, before the markings on his back lighted-up and he moved forward like an arrow of shadows towards Konoha, easily out-pacing the old man and reaching the Village in a matter of minutes.

He was surprised though when once delivered the news his partner did not growl, scream or even sighed in dismay, he instead flashed a pleased smile to the Centipede while sipping his tea and every ounce of his anger simply evaporating in an instant, he actually looked like somebody finally getting an unbearable weight removed from their shoulders: calm and relaxed, finally.

“Took them long enough.” the Cultivator commented with a good chuckle.

“ **Uh?** ” the lone Summon uttered in confusion.

“Don’t worry, Mukade, even if a bit later than anticipated, everybody is still following my script.” Shen simply commented.

“ **What?”**

“You’ll see.” was all the answer the other offered, before a new chuckle, this one cold and merciless, closed his answer.


	6. To muddle the waters.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All pieces are finally ready on the board, both on Wave's front and Konoha.  
> It's finally time for Shen to make his move and start reaping the benefits! He only needs Gato to annoy Konoha just enough to not notice his next move until it is too late...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I don’t own a thing, please support the official releases of what I use.
> 
> MC is called Shen Lan-Yun (Lan-Yun, “ 兰韵 ” means orchid melody.)
> 
> I am working on the next chapter of both "Green Spider" and "No Problem, I am a Ninja.", at the same time.  
> Updtate may take a while. 
> 
> Sorry.

****

**(** _I borrowed this pic, all rights reserved to its original owner. This is a good approximation of Shen's future appearances whenever not pretending to be just a "Son of a Winemaker" **)**_

**Chapter 6: To muddle the waters.**

**Small apartment above the Wine House -**

Mukade simply watched as his companion kept drinking tea until the cup was empty before sealing the entire tea set, a precious-looking and deliciously-made set made in green jade, inside his sword.

“ **So...** ” the Centipede Summon asked uncertain.

“Yes?”

“ **You were not angry because Wave was about to ask Konoha for help...But because they weren’t doing it soon enough?** ” Mukade asked once again for confirmation.

“Once again, my friend, yes. We were getting behind schedule, so I was rightfully getting annoyed. I need Gato to be more worried about Konoha’s intervention than demolishing the forest near Wave and my new secret base...I also need a favour from Konoha.” Shen answered, and while his new body was that of a child, the aura he exuded was still that of a grandiose Lord, straight back and poise and everything else.

“ **A favour** **?** ” the Centipede asked, confused.

“ _Yù bàng xiāng zhēng, yú rén dé lì._ ” Shen answered in the language of his old world. ( _Chinese, basically._ )

“ **Uh?”**

“A proverb of my old world. It means: _**a snipe and a clam fought with each other, but the fisherman benefited.**_ _”_ the Cultivator explained.

“A clam was sitting out in the sun when suddenly a bird flew down to peck at the clam. The clam slammed the shell shut, gripping the bird’s beak in between. The bird said, **“** _ **If it doesn’t rain today, and it doesn’t rain tomorrow, I shall see a dead clam on the beach.**_ ” The clam said, “ _ **If I don’t open today, and I don’t open up tomorrow, I shall see a dead**_ _ **bird**_ _ **on the beach.**_ ”. While they were still grappling with each other, a fisherman passed by and netted them both.”

**“** ** **Meaning?”** **

“This proverb is about the loggerhead competition between two parties, both end up as losers and a third party becomes a winner. I will be the fisherman in this little fight between _Clam_ and _Bird_.”

“ **So you want the ninja Konoha will send to Wave and Gato’s men to fight?** ”

“Yes, after all, clear waters have no fishes...If I want to get my prize, I need to first create enough chaos to make sure nobody will notice my own movements.”

“ **You said you are interested in Haku, are you afraid the boy’s ability will be too much for you? You said you still have to recover your old strength.** ” the Summon asked while following the boy downstairs by walking on the wall.

“Yes and no. I am not one to rush to adventure without a clear plan, I prefer to consolidate my power before make any personal movement, and making sure every piece on the chess table moves accordingly is the first step. I have not a clear picture of Haku’s abilities, and with most of my power still too strenuous to use for my new body, I won’t let a mere lucky shot ruin everything.” the Cultivator answered, all the while both entered the storage room of the Wine House to check the barrels in there.

“ **Why you even need that boy for?** ”

“His chakra.”

“ **His Chakra?** ” the beast repeated.

“You said that his chakra is of the Ice Alignment, yes?”

“ **I said that based on what I saw while spying on him he probably possesses the rare ‘ _Ice Element Bloodline’_. Meaning that it’s easy for him to use Ice Element Techniques...To put it extremely simple.**” Mukade answered from one of the barrels on the top, near to the ceiling.

“I understood that, and I need to see if that is enough to grow one of my ingredients.”

“ **Ingredients?”** the Summon asked in dread.

“There is a rare fungus that can be used in a myriad of Level-Six Formulas that will greatly improve our Cultivation. Unfortunately it only grows in icy-cold caves rich in Ice Alignment Qi. I want to use Haku as a growing _pot_ to cultivate that fungus, and his Ice Chakra may be what we need...Once forcefully purified _Chakra_ back into _Qi_ , something I suspect will be quite painful for him as well.” Shen answered with a small smile as he selected a barrel to inspect its content, and growing satisfied as the wine inside looked ready to be sold.

“ **Painful? You mean Haku will be alive the whole time?”** Mukade asked with a low voice.

“I do need him to continuously produce Ice Chakra so to have a steady supply of **_Frozen Hell Spores_**. If it makes you feel better, I can make sure he will be under constant drugs: he will live happily in his own personal Heaven while those fungi will borrow his flesh to keep on living.”

“ **Shen...I am ready to get my pincers dirty to get what I want...But sometimes there is a bit of a limit one mustn’t surpass.”** Mukade whispered.

“...”

“...”

There was a long silence after that statement, but it was not tense, it was somber and heavy while the boy kept checking the barrels to select other two containers that will be then brought to the main room to be sold to the customers.

“Do you know why I am considered _Evil_ , Mukade?” Shen finally spoke, with unwavering voice still filled in godly sobriety.

“ **...”** the Centipede stood in silence and just looked at him.

“ _Normal_ people walk a thousand steps in their Journey and carefully avoid every ant they meet in fear of stepping on them, because they find even that small life too precious to sacrifice.

“ _Bold_ people walk a thousand steps and don’t care about the ants they step on during their Journey, only to then regret the loss of life of all of them once done, and crying fat crocodile tears while doing so.” at that Shen straightened his back and his eyes turned sharp like a blade.

“I walk those steps uncaring of the ants I step on, of the villages I burn and the mountains I flatten, and when I reach my goal I don’t turn back to watch what ruins I have left behind, I keep stepping forward! If there is a man in front of me, I kill them. If there is a Village, I burn it and if there is a God, I slay them. Some things require great sacrifices to achieve them, if you cry once done those unspeakable acts then you do not deserve that Prize.

Apparently I am “ _Evil”_ because I am not afraid of what I have to do to get to my goal, and because I accept the weight of my sins without lowering my head...A concept those vaunted ‘ _Heroes’_ seem unable to grasp instead.” he explained.

“... **Do you even have a soul?** ”

“Objectively speaking? Yes, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. From a more _Romantic_ point of view? My soul died the day I started my Journey to Godhood.” he answered, unconcerned.

“ **You mean the day your father died?”** Mukade asked.

“I won’t hide behind that tragedy,”

“ **That does not sound like a ‘** _ **No**_ **’ to me, my friend,”**

“...Perhaps.” Shen muttered while leaving the room carrying the selected jugs of wine.

“ **Then I guess I’ll have to be your substitute soul, just to not make you go** _ **too much**_ **overboard,”** the giant insect said, hiding under his clothes.

“You are welcomed to try.”

**Later that day -**

A young girl with fiery red hair tied into a duo of tight buns on the lower back of her head, slightly above her neck, was humming to herself while aimlessly walking through the streets of the Village, her shining-new white jumpsuit ( _A present from her Parents for her being selected for Team 7_ ) was adorned with thin red stripes on the pant’s legs and jacket’s sleeves while a giant red Uzu Spiral covered her entire back, she just checked her reflection on every window she passed in front of…

“ **Always so cheerful and happy, you will give me diabetes.** ” a dark, malevolent voice hissed in the back of her head, and the new reflection she saw of herself appeared distorted to show a GIANT red slit eye glaring at her.

“You should be thankful mommy and daddy let you speak freely, after your last try at taking over, you are lucky they did not add a muzzle.” Mito Namikaze, daughter of Minato the Fourth Hokage, answered, unconcerned.

“ _ **Hn**_ **! The almighty** _ **Yellow Flash!**_ **Defeater of Tailed Beasts! Slayer of armies...Killer of infants.** ” the giant beast sealed inside her said with a tone of pure cruel amusement.

That last remark made the girl falter in her step.

“You talk of things you know nothing about!” Mito hissed in fury, trying to not have people notice she was basically talking to herself.

**Inside her Seal -**

In the utter emptiness that was the Seal on Mito’s body reigned total darkness, not a single light in sight, nor ground or sky, only nothingness, and floating alone in that depressing Void of nothing, a single smooth sphere of rock slowly floated without stop, and chained to it on his back spread-eagle with both arms and legs painfully pulled apart was a giant nine-tailed fox with rust-red fur, hundreds of chains circling arms, legs, torso, neck and even his tails way too tightly, so to stop every possible movement of the creature.

But the beast seemed unperturbed by the torture-like position he was in, after years in that same predicament when sealed inside the girl’s mother, Kurama’s body had  grown accustomed to the hellish treatment, so repeating the experience once moved inside a new Vessel barely registered in his mind.

He had ways to entertain himself after all:  influence few nightmares, bouts of  _Dark Emotions_ to cloud the girl’s judgment, sporadic half-heart tries at taking over her body to cause havoc, and best of all, knowing enough  _dirty laundry_ about their little happy family to give a jab or two when particularly bored. Many would call all that  _pettiness_ , but Kurama felt it was well deserved at the very least.

“ **Ohohoho! But,** **I do know! I know way more than even you about it! I can see through your eyes, I always could! Your precious ‘** _ **Daddy’**_ **can’t cut me off enough to stop me from sharing your pitiful senses, because if he does that, then** **his** **precious** _ **widdle Princess**_ **wouldn’t be able to** _ **steal**_ **my chakra to empower herself!** ” Kurama said, his giant fox face twisted into a devilish grin.

“ _I steal nothing!_ ” the girl replied, pretty face burning red in rage.

“ **Ooh! Yes, you do! Yes you do! My chakra for your little ninja tricks and** _ **Your Brother’s**_ **to keep me chained here!”**

“ _Don’t you dare speaking of him!”_ Mito roared in fury.

“ _ **Daddy**_ **still hurts, eh? Every 10** **th** **of October he closes in his office at home and cries while** _ **Mommy**_ **goes visiting his grave...What about you? Do you feel him wriggle under your skin? After all, it was you father’s failure of a Summon to kill him! But in the end, you all benefited from it, because you knew your flesh would have been unable to hold me back!**

**It would take a** _ **Pure-Blood Uzumaki** _ **for that, like your mother was, and you are only half of one...But thanks to the life an** **d** **Chakra of another** _ **‘** **Half Uzumaki’** _ **, the Seal could be done properly.**

**You are a Parasite, without my Power you wouldn’t be able to pull half the things you can do, and without your brother’s** _**everything** _ **you could not** **have** **be** **en** **able to** **achieve** **half of the remaining half of your achievements...Quite pathetic!”** Kurama said before letting go a LOUD laugh that managed to echo even in the complete void around him.

“ _SHUTUP! SHUTUP! SHUTUP! SHUTUP! SHUTUP! SHUTUP! SHUTUP!”_ the girl yelled in her thoughts, but the desperation in her words was still there.

“ **Huhuhu! Truth hurts, isn’t it? You never even tried to see how far you could go without me! How to assert yourself without crutches! You are-”** The new round of jabs and veiled insults stopped when the Biju felt _something_ nearby in the Real World.

“ _ **Uhu?**_ ” for the first time in decades, counting both his time in Kushina’s Seal and now Mito’s, Kurama desperately tried to pull his head up to better look around.

“ _What are you doing now?_ ” Mito asked in bitter hatred.

“ **Be quiet, Child!** ” the Fox barked back, surprisingly silencing her with the never-before-used sharp tone.

_Somebody was inside the Seal, standing on Kurama’s Belly!_

“ **Who are you?”** The Biju asked once managed to _painfully_ move his head up enough for his eyes to catch a glimpse of the shadowy figure in long flowing robes standing on his stomach with their arms behind their back and looking straight at him...Although with a featureless face.

“ _The Name is Shen.”_ the figure ‘ _answered’_ , if so could be described, as the words came more as _feeling_ to Kurama than actual sound.

“ **Shen? And what do you want?”** looking in unease at the strange development, the usual cutting remark Kurama was honestly a Master at delivering failed to come up.

“ _Nothing now, but later I will come for your blood and chakra.”_ the figure answered.

“ **And why should I give you both?”** Kurama asked with narrowed eyes, the figure was _reeking_ of Maliciousness and Greed, but _refined_ to the point their Dark Thoughts smelled sweet like honey while perfectly hiding their poisonous nature, honestly speaking, Kurama found such ‘control’ over that kind of evil impulses not something a Mortal Human should be able to pull off…

Even Madara himself was prone to let his Anger/Pride get the better of him, like he faintly remembered when the bastard summoned him against Hashirama; the Fox’ brain may have been clouded under the Uchiha’s hypnosis, but few fragments of memories were still there.

“ _It’s not a matter of ‘_ IF’ _you will let me. All that matters is that I WILL get them. I am just meeting you to sate my curiosity.”_ the man, he was using male pronouns, although old-fashioned ones, answered.

“ **And what makes you believe I will let you?** ” Kurama answered with a growl.

“ _Who are you talking with?”_ Mito choose that moment to appear in the Seal to stand on the Biju’s stomach, right in front of the cloaked figure as if unable to see them.

“ _I will get them because I need them. What this Lord wants, he gets, no Devils or Gods have a say in it...And neither will you.”_ The figure answered with a calm tone, literally stating a fact, before turning around and fading away.

“ _HOY! Furball, I am talking to you_!” Mito’s projection said, huffing annoyed.

“ **Quit yapping and look around! Look for anything out of ordinary! NOW!”** Kurama yelled.

“ _Why should I listen to-_ ”

“ **SOMEBODY. WAS. HERE! They forced their way into the Seal! They must be close!** ” the Biju cut her off abruptly, actually forcefully expelling her from the Seal.

**Real World -**

“What the-”

“ **Look. Around. NOW! Nobody should be able to get in here, but they forced their way here without you noticing! And since every damn Uchiha beside that brat in your class and his big brother is dead, that means nobody should be able to do it. Who did it is skilled and powerful and not friendly. NOW LOOK FOR THAT BASTARD! MAKE YOURSELF USEFUL FOR ONCE!** ”

“I am looking, I am looking! Don’t scream!” the girl hissed while wildly around herself, on the near streets and rooftops comprised.

Not too far away, an innocuous-looking kid  reading a comic book while sitting on a bench gained a sinister smile as he watched the girl scan every corner of the street and even passing in front of him a couple of times.

Chuckling amused by the spectacle, the reborn Cultivator calmly put a sign on the page he was at and once rolled-up and pocketed the thing, he made his way back towards his father’s wine-house after sending a friendly wave to the frantic Mito as he walked away.

“So that is a Biju. Quite the intriguing design.” Shen admitted, faintly impressed, and next to him a shadow moved to climb up his pant leg to circle his body until a big centipede’s head popped-out from his shirt’s collar.

“ **Beside your pathological need to aggravate whoever you meet, what was this** _ **meeting**_ **for?”** Mukade asked.

“You described Bijus as ‘ _Dest_ _ructive Power with a Will for itself’_ , the closest thing to a Natural Disaster able to think for itself, correct?”

“ **Pretty much, nobody really knows how they came to be, only that they are around since the dawn of Ninjutsu. Many say that the first to fight one was the Sage himself, the guy that helped** _ **creating**_ **ninjutsu.”** the lone Summon answered.

“I saw a serious lack of information regarding what society was like BEFORE Ninja Villages came to be,” Shen said with a frown.

“ **That’s because there wasn’t much of a ‘** _Society’_ **at the time. It was mostly small Clans getting-by and managing themselves with their own laws. Then there was the ‘** _Era of Endless Wars’_ **...That is self-explanatory, then there is a** _ **Hole**_ **of a couple decades in history books, a couple disasters that for some reason nobody wanted to record in detail and THEN Ninja Villages started popping-up, soon followed by the entire ‘** _ **Ninja System’**_ **getting finalized.** ”

“You are not much of an historian.” the Cultivator commented, unsatisfied.

“ **History is useful only to not repeat the same mistakes, if you ask me. I was supposed to become the next Clan Leader, and was learning how to manage a Subsidiary Clan, and how to back-stab** **a** **Main Clan and usurp their power,** **not much mattered other than that** **.**

**Not many, either Summon or Human, care about what happened BEFORE Villages came to be, and that’s a shame, but I am more interested in the** _**Now** _ **and in the** _**Past.** _ **”** Mukade admitted with a  _shrug_ of a couple of his thousands legs.

“So those Beasts had always been around...Unchanged?”

“ **Pretty much, I heard that when their Vessel dies they either break free or** _ **die**_ **as well, only to reform later, as if their body get dispersed like mist for a while.”**

“Interesting, that needs further study then,”Shen answered with a predatory smile he hid immediately as soon as he entered the main room of the wine-house.

“Hey there, little Naruto!” one of the guests said with a big smile.

“Hatsui-san, good evening! Is the wine of your liking?”

“Yep! As always.” the old man answered.

“Happy to hear that,” the Cultivator gave a short bow and joined his father behind the counter.

“Good boy, helping his dad, more kids should be like that.” the guest muttered with a pleased expression.

“Affairs are flourishing! This is a good sign!” Yojiro admitted with a sigh.

“Good Wine is loved by everybody, father. And yours is very good, it was a given!”

“Glad to see your single success didn’t give you a huge Ego, but it gives me hope that one day you will be able to continue our family tradition and manage this Wine-house well!” the man answered, patting the boy’s head.

“...You sure you want a ponytail?”

“Yes, father.”

“As long as you are happy.” the man answered, not fully convinced.

_Tap! Tap! Tap!_

A faint tapping from the ceiling alerted the Cultivator something was trying to attract his attention, and a stealthy look over his shoulder rewarded him with the image of a golden spider looking at him expectantly.

“…” without saying a word, Shen tapped his shoulder, right on Mukade’s head hiding under his clothes.

“ **Got it.”** he heard whispered straight in his hear, and he felt the centipede’s body silently slither out from his pant leg and out of view so to climb the wall and meet the spider.

Once the store emptied of customers and Yojiro walked in the back to collect more jugs to sell on the go, Shen remained alone to guard the place, and he watched Mukade walk back down the wall until he was at eye level with him.

“ **That’s Kuroko** **from the Spider Clan** **, subsidiary of the Snakes, he got in contact with a guy from a minor Clan under the Toads and got some juicy bit of news...Or so he described it.”**

“What does he want in exchange?” Shen asked, smirking at the clear greed behind the spider’s attitude.

“ **Two Pills, one for him and one for his informant,”** Mukade answered with a telling look.

“...He is going to eat both,”

“ **Very likely, unless it’s a trap to discover who is giving those pills to Summons.”**

“Still too soon for them to try laying traps, and even then, I will soon cut supply as the results I got are satisfactory. The ones that died because of the failed versions and the ones that went insane from the too intense output showed me the fine line between Success and Failure.”

“ **S-So we can start?! R-Really!?** ” Mukade asked with a very excited voice.

“Indeed, give the guy this pill, and tell him it has double the quantity of Elixir inside, and get everything out of him.” the Cultivator answered while producing from the sword’s hilt popping out from the ground a small golden sphere.

“ **...What does it do instead?** ” Mukade asked once looked at the small thing in dread.

“It will have twice the usual effect. And then will make him explode. It doesn’t matter if he is a spy waiting to double-cross us or not, he outlived his usefulness.”

“ **...Oh, well! Sucks to be him.”** the centipede answered, taking the pill in his pincers and walking back to the fidgeting spider.

A  rapid-fire exchange of info and the spider gladly accepted the pill and returned to his summoning realm,  only for him to explode like a grenade soon after, but it will take a while before anybody noticed his disappearance since the small thing had hidden well before taking his pill.

But this mattered not to Shen as Mukade had returned under his clothes and was already relying what he was told.

“ **Seems like the Hokage finalized everything. An old man asked for a Mission, a C-Rank, to be escorted back to his ‘** _ **Normal and Peaceful village’,**_ **where the Genin Team will hopefully be moved by their sad state and help them get the freedom from the tyrannical businessman suffocating them! They will depart tomorrow morning.”** Mukade explained with a dramatic sigh and swoon, cackling immediately after.

“Too bad that Konoha’s spies already know what is really happening there and actually need the men they will ‘ _Generously’_ put there for their protection to use the village as an intermediary post to spy on Mist.”

“ **Information is power, Mist has been trying for years to put their men in there to spy on Konoha, and now this Village has the grounds to turn the tables and spy on them. Is not lack of trust...Just assurance they** **w on’t get strange ideas.**”

“Then I guess the waters are finally muddled enough for us to move. It’s time for Haku and a couple others to become our esteemed _Guests._ How long before that simpleton in Konoha’s prison gets executed?”

“ **You mean the guy that tried to steal the Forbidden Scroll?...Two weeks, if I remember correctly, the plan seems to be to ‘ _Suicide Him’_ in his cell, presenting it as him recovering his honor or some bullshit.**”

“So he will get desperate if we inform him of that, good. Desperate people are more open to desperate measures, just what we need.”

“ **Want me to tell him now?”**

“Wait until after we return from Wave, just in case he is more foolish than what we actually need.”

“ **Sure thing! But how do we leave this place without your father noticing?”**

“With the exception of tomorrow that will be a free day for me, I will be moving out at night and returning before dawn, there are elixirs that will make sure he will sleep soundly, they are harmless and may actually help him feel refreshed in the morning.”

“ **Nice!”**

Not much could be said after that as Yujiro returned with the new bottles just as a new wave of customers entered the wine-house.

**The Next Day – Road towards Wave -**

Kakashi was feeling strangely on edge lately, his beloved dogs as well kept growling restless at random corners of his apartment at random days, and listening to Pakkun _something_ was actually hiding in the shadows whenever they did that, and that something in his apartment smelled like a bug.

And since Jiraiya reported about the Toads’ Visions about a centipede,  with several  friendly-enough Summons reporting the same,  along the disappearance, mysterious deaths and even bouts of Madness of several  Summoning Clan Members , both from the Major and Subsidiary Clans, whoever was in possession of a Summoning Contract felt nervous.

Especially since some of the Summons that were now raving mad and rambling constantly all seemingly had one thing in common: meeting a Centipede Summon before going mad and  calling-out  the name  _Shen_ that probably  was the Centipede’s Master.

“ _Kakashi, for now focus on the Mission in Wave, but keep an eye open and an ear on the ground, We’ll keep asking around to whoever has a Summoning Contract for more information, too many things are piling-up to be a chance._ ” Minato’s words echoed inside the Jounin’s head as he and his Team walked through the patch of trees connecting Konoha to Wave.

It was then that he saw two puddles that were not supposed to be there, and a rapid mental run-down of who he knew used that trick to lay ambushes made his only uncovered eye narrow slightly; but the alien thing he felt  in the air was the stench  of decaying matter,  that was not supposed to be there .

“Stay here, protect Tezuna-san.” He instructed with a low voice, making Mito and the others move in a triangular formation to protect the old man they were escorting home.

Once neared the puddles Kakashi’s hand darted inside one to grab something, showing the thing to be way deeper than expected as the  _water_ reached his elbow, before the thing disappeared like a mirage to show the Ninja’s hand closing tightly on the collar of a dead man’s uniform.

“AAAH!” Tazuna yelled in horror at seeing the beheaded corpse at Kakashi’s feet, the kids with him showed great strength at not emptying their stomachs at the horrid spectacle, even if their green faces showed they still felt ill watching.

“Dead...By the state he is in, two days...Three tops. They were waiting for somebody, those weapons are even coated in poison,” Kakashi said with a grave voice, and once dispelled the second puddle, another headless corpse appeared in the small patch of trees.

“This one too. No signs of struggle. They didn’t even notice a thing.” the Jonin whispered.

“ _This is not the job of one of us, they would have also removed the body so to not arise suspicion...Somebody else got them. But who?_ _The wound on both men’s necks look like something cut them from both sides at once with two blades moving in opposite directions, like a giant scissor._ _And whoever did it, made sure the Illusion would last even after the caster died, they have been put up to be found_.” Kakashi thought, and a fast summon later, a pug wearing blue clothes and a Konoha Forehead protector appeared next to him.

“ **Yes?”** Pakkun asked.

“Somebody was here and left us a _present_. Can you tell if it’s a smell you know?” Kakashi asked.

“ **Let me check.** ” the small Dog Summon said while taking its time around the bodies.

_Sniff! Sniff! Sniff! Sniff!_

“... **Kakashi...** **They** **have the** **smell** **of a** **Centipede** **on them** **.** ” Pakkun said with a grave tone.

“Damn it! Anybody else was here? The Summoner?” he asked.

“ **Can’t feel a thing, if there was somebody else, their trail has long gone cold.”**

“And every trail has already run cold? Even the Centipede?”

“ **I...WAIT! It’s faint, but I feel something!** ” Pakkun was about to answer when his eyes flew wide open.

“Close?”

“ **Not too far away.** ”

“You others follow me, but at the fist sign of trouble you need to promise me to take Tazuna and run!” Kakashi ordered.

“But...Sensei!” Mito said, shocked.

“No buts! I won’t risk your life, promise that if I tell you, you will run!”

“Okay, Sensei.” Kiba promised, silencing Mito with a look of sympathy.

“Just be careful,” Sasuke added with a low whisper.

“Huhuhu! Don’t worry, they did not make me a Jonin just because I am pretty!” Kakashi answered with a forced chuckle to try lighten the mood.

Walking carefully as they followed Pakkun, the group left the path to just traverse the thick forest, reaching a small campfire they soon saw from several feet away, the sun was already setting and a lone small figure was sitting on a tree stump while cooking a snake of all things on an open fire; and next to the figure, the biggest Centipede the kids had ever seen stood in wait, it was long enough to easily wrap itself several times around a human body and thick like a human arm, in the light of the fire its red head looked like it was still dripping blood.

“ **I feel something** **...Medical Herbs...Poisons...Incense...No human smell though, whoever it is,** **they** **used a mixture of these things to cover their original smell. They are good.”** Pakkun muttered with a tone of begrudge respect.

“And you can’t tell them apart?”

“ **The Herbs are from Konoha, the Poison seems to be the same kind used by the Experts of Suna and the incense...It’s incense, there are too many damn types to pin-point from where this comes. It’s rare and expensive, clearly, but every big Temple or rich merchant has them, it’s hard to tell.** ” the dog answered, sighing.

“ **The Centipede’s smell is the same,** **I** **can say** **that** **the kid** **doesn’t** **smells like the one that attacked the guys,** **because while I feel the smell of the** **same incense and herbs masquerading the scent,** **I** **don’t feel the same** **smell of poisons** **faintly hanging around** **him** **.** **His smell** **is** **different.** ”

“Keep the kids safe, I’ll talk to that guy.”

“ **Be careful, Kakashi.** ”

The Jonin just gave a nod, and mimicking perfectly a carefree attitude and walk, he neared the fireplace, unwavering meeting the beady eyes of the Centipede as soon as it turned around to face him.

“Hello!”

“ **What do you want?** ” Mukade hissed, annoyed.

“Oh! Good Evening! I thought it was my Master returning, who are you instead?” the kid asked with a distorted voice as he too turned around to face Kakashi.

The first thing the Jonin thought once seen the kid was: _White_ . Pure white clothes almost shining in the first rays of the moon, pale skin, a white wooden mask carved with maniacal care to show an old man’s face with uncanny details, even recreating the man’s two long white mustaches. Even the kid’s hair were pure white, probably dyed, Kakashi thought.  The mask was somehow distorting his voice into a metallic and high-pitched tone, making it impossible to recognize.

Then there was the second detail that made him pause  once seen the kid’s clothes :  ** _Onmyoji._ **

“ _A practitioner of_ _ **Onmyodo**_ _? (Way of the Yin and Yang) I thought they never_ _leave_ _the Capital...The Daimyos always keep them close…”_ Kakashi thought, both confused and worried.

“ **Since when those weirdos leave the Daimyo’s Palace?** ” Pakkun muttered.

“Who?” Kiba asked.

“ _Onmyoji_ **, Practitioners of mystic arts, Mediums, spiritualists and Esoteric Consultants of the Daimyos. Not much is** **known** **about them beside the tales of what powers they are ‘** _ **Supposed’**_ **to have. I heard their most astounding ability is summoning** _Shikigami_ **,** **but I never saw one. They do have some political cloth, but they are mostly there to give suggestions and divine good fortune...I don’t understand why one would be around here...With a Centipede.** ” the small dog muttered with narrowed eyes.

“Is your friend afraid of Mukade, perhaps?” the small white figure asked.

“Is Mukade the name of your Summon?” Kakashi asked.

“He is the partner of my Master, he left him here to protect me.” the boy answered.

“ **Why? You have something against Centipedes?** ” Mukade asked with a mocking tone.

“Ahaha! No, No. It’s just the first time I meet a Centipede Summon.” Kakashi answered with a perfectly-faked jovial laugh.

“ **We are hardly seen around, we love our privacy.”** Mukade answered while tightly wrapping himself around Shen’s neck and body and resting his pincers very close to the Cultivator’s jugular.

“ _I see what you are doing, Summon._ ” Kakashi thought with only a minute narrowing of his eye as he watched the kid gently pat the animal’s head.

“Where is your Master now? This is hardly the place for a kid to remain alone.” he asked.

“Master? Somewhere in a near Village, we just left Konoha and were about to go to Wave, then it will be Mist.” the kid answered.

“Oh! Konoha! We come from there! Was he there to meet the Hokage?” Kakashi asked.

“I don’t know, I am not supposed to know, actually. I am training under him to learn the secrets of the World.” Shen answered, his amused smirk perfectly hidden by his mask.

“The Secrets of the World even? It’s a mighty goal,”

“Nothing is too mighty for Master Shen. His eyes pierce the Heavens and his voice upturns seas,” the boy answered with an awed tone.

“Master Shen, eh? Curious name.” Kakashi answered, zeroing on the detail immediately.

“ **My partner is not from around here, ‘kay? Mind your business.** ” Mukade hissed, annoyed.

“Be nice, Mister Mukade. Dear stranger, Master Shen deserves this praise and more! I happily accepted wearing this mask in his likeness as a constant reminder of my goal to become as powerful and knowledgeable as he is. I assure you that curious name aside, he is the real deal! No secret remains such in his presence!”

“Then should we meet, I will deem myself lucky. Be careful out here, we’ll be on our way instead.” Kakashi answered, giving the boy a small wave while returning to his Team.

“Be safe yourself, dear Stranger! Evil forces are out there,” Shen answered while watching the Team and Sensei leave until they disappeared from view.

“…”

“…”

“Gone?”

“ **All of them, Shen. Even the guy spying from the shadows.** ” Mukade answered.

“Good, now they have a name and a face to chase after,”

“ **Why give them your name?”**

“My _old_ name, is a way as any other to separate my _Mission_ from my personal life, until I ascend again I can’t risk those paranoid fools to chase me day and night.” he answered, getting up to stretch his back.

“ **We are moving again?”**

“Of course we are! Shen is in Wave after all!” Shen answered with a chuckle, taking the snake from the fire and walking leisurely towards Wave while idly munching on the cooked animal.

**With Kakashi -**

“Wow, that guy was...Waaaay too much into his Master,” Kiba commented with a shiver.

“It happens in circles like the Onmyoji’s one, the Teacher, or Master, is almost the _owner_ of the student. This Shen simply took it a bit farther than the others. Nothing to worry about,” Kakashi answered, playing everything as inconsequential, while also keeping an eye on Jiraiya still following them from the shadows.

“ _At least the Toads will have somewhere to start from, it should placate them enough for now._ ” he mentally added once seen the Toad Sage send him a nod after talking with a tiny Toad messenger.

It was the rustling of cloth that then caught the Jonin attention as Shen passed by them by jumping from a tree branch to the other, although in a manner that gave the impression his feet were hardly touching ground at all.

“ _That is a nice show of skills, boy. Fast Tempo and zero noise, only your clothes are heard, your Master choose well,_ ” the Jonin thought with a calculative gaze as the kid disappeared fast as lighting from view.

“Why can’t we tree-jump too, Sensei?” Mito asked.

“Well, unless any of you wishes to carry Tezuna-san on their back, we’ll have to take things slow.” Kakashi answered, chuckling.

“Sorry,” the old man muttered with a low voice.

“Naah! It’s okay! It’s not the speed you run that matters, all that matters is reaching your goal!” Kakashi answered.

“...You stole that from a box of chocolate, sensei?” Sasuke asked.

“Nope! It was from a fortune cookie,” he countered, gaining a chorus of groans from the others in answer.

**Some time later – Border with Wave Village -**

“Tazuna! Over here! Hurry!” a lone man with a small boat called-out with a loud whisper.

“Oh! You were prepared, Tazuna-san?” Kakashi asked once seen the guy waiting for them on the shores.

“Being always prepared is not something only ninjas are good at!” the builder answered.

“Considering the sob story you gave about your Village, I am not surprised,” Mito answered, sighing.

“I may have used more fake tears than necessary, but the situation is just as bad as I told you. If I have to pull on people hart strings to get help, then so be it.” the old man answered.

“Makes sense.” Kiba admitted.

“Jump on! We have no time to waste!” the man on the boat hissed, starting to push the boat forward with the long pole in his hands as soon as everybody was onboard.

“Did things get worse?” Tazuna asked.

“Very. Now not only the ships, but the soldiers already in Wave have started disappearing, from thugs to Missing-Nin, I am told. That guy with the huge sword and the Bishonen brat with him are frothing at the mouth as well, apparently the same somebody broke into their hideout and left a note about his sword being ‘ _Badly made to be a legendary sword from Mist’_ , the guy cursed quite a lot about it, apparently he took it personally.” the rower answered, gulping.

“Somebody with a big Ego indeed,” Kakashi commented.

“ _And great skills too, Zabuza Momochi is a trained assassin with a bad reputation...Sneaking on him is no easy feat, but insulting his honor...That is asking for trouble._ ” he also thought.

When they reached shore, they found, to their horror, Zabuza himself already waiting for them with his sword lazily held on his shoulder.

“You are late, boys! Hahaha!” the Missing-Nin says with a cruel laugh.

“Ho-How did you know?!” Tazuna asked, paling considerably.

“A very helpful fellow gave me a heads-up! Apparently he doesn’t like you enough to make sure you had a proper _Welcome Party_ as soon as you got out from your Lil’ Village!” he answered.

“And who is this gentleman?” Kakashi asked with narrowed eyes, uncovering the implanted _**Sharingan**_ he had hidden under his forehead protector.

“Ha! Beats me! He only sent his Summon forward to warn me! Something about ‘ _His Partner Shen holding a grudge against Konoha for bothering his researches_ ’. Not that it matters to me! I only care about knowing when you and the brats were coming!”

“ **SHEN! That’s the name of the guy that got inside the Seal!** ” Kurama roared in anger.

“ _That Shen again, he blew our Mission as a revenge for our investigations on his grave-robbing? And he has the galls to call it Revenge? How shameless can a human be?_ ” Kakashi thought, sneering in distaste.

“Uh! So we have lots of ' _friends'_ outside our walls, eh? I guess criminals stick together!” the Jonin then said with a cold voice.

“Oh, please! At best I am a businessman! I got a set of skills people happily pay for, and I offer those same skills to the best bidder!...Sure I also enjoy what I do, but that’s the secret! ‘ _If you love what you do, you won’t_ work _a day in your life!_ Ahahahaha!” Zabuza countered, pointing at Kakashi with the massive sword in his hands.

**Not too far away -**

Haku kept watching as Zabuza soon assaulted the ninja from Konoha, forcing Kakashi to uncover more and more of his skills instead of playing it off like he normally would.

“The kids are not moving, good.” the masked boy muttered, knowing full well his orders should the Genin try to take the old man to safety.

It was then he felt a hand lovingly caress his cheek from behind him, making him turn around sharply and launch a trio of needles at the offending intruder only to see those hit a far-away tree as nobody was behind him anymore.

“Who’s there?!”

_**Huhuhuhuhu! Soon Haku…Soon…** _

The whisper of voice barely reached his hears, making him shiver in dread and scan his surroundings with unblinking eyes.

The waters were  _muddled_ just right! Shen only needed to pay a visit to Gato for a couple more of his men and then the Cultivator will be able to start reaping his benefits, both from Wave and from Konoha.

** W ith Shen – Wave village -  **

“This tasteless mansions should be where Gato is hiding, yes?” Shen asked.

“... **Yeah** …” Mukade answered while eyeing the small copper jar in the Cultivator’s hand.

“Speak, my friend. What is it?”

“ **What the fuck are those?** ”

“This is the fist batch of _**Gu Worms**_ I created, the first batch of MANY. This represents the next step in our Cultivation Path, and with these we will reap enough benefits to jump-start your Cultivation and push mine towards the first threshold, after that, we’ll soon have to face one of the many _bottlenecks_ separating us from our advancing in level, but have no fear, I have disclosed many taboo secrets about it as well, your advancement will be just as smooth as mine will be.”

“ **Okay, just keep those freakish maggots away from me. Worms should not have all those** _ **human eyes**_ **or spikes covering them**.”

“Huhuhu! My friend, you are still so narrow-minded, it will be almost comical showing you the _Joys_ and _Horrors_ my world can produce.” Shen replied, amused, as he neared the entrance of the “ _Secret”_ residence Gato had took for himself.

“Hey, brat! This is private property!” one of the two men guarding the entrance hissed.

_THUNK! SNIP!_

Before any of the two could react, Shen’s sword went plunged deep inside his chest cutting his heart neatly in two, while at the same time Mukade whipped himself forward to close his pincers around the other man’s neck to  _ easily _ behead him.

Both men died instantly and many others followed until Shen reached Gato himself; and by the time the Cultivator reached him, the short businessman decided he will hear what the scary white-dressed boy had to say very carefully.

* * *

_** G u Worms ** _ **are a real thing in both Chinese and Japanese Culture in Real Life too, not only the main point of an incredible Light Novel that will hopefully be completed one day, no matter how much those _Psychos_ at the head of the chinese government wish otherwise.**

** But this doesn’t mean I won’t borrow some ideas as well from “ ** _ RI _ ** ”, the ideas is just too good not to use. **

  
  



End file.
